Workplace Conditions - Part One

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and this is a subject that’s nagged at me - the continuing anti-union rhetoric that I hear, and have heard since 1980.  An important note: my employers have arbitrarily deemed it a violation of their rules for any employee to identify him or herself as such on any “social media” platform.  While their mandate is probably illegal, this is a battle that I choose not to fight here.  I’ll simply say that I am a uniformed employee of a large municipality in the southeast corner of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

On February 17^th, 1899, a fire broke out in St. John the Evangelist Church, here in my town.  Units responded and fought the fire.  There occurred a partial collapse of the structure, and three men, William Chance, Hugh Duffy, and George Steinle were killed.  A fourth man, James Shea, was injured and died two weeks later on March 2^nd, 1899.  The fire was extinguished and the church saved.

In recent years, the clergy at St. John’s have generously said mass on the anniversary of the fire in honor of the men who perished, and invite the men’s descendants and current members of the first-arriving units.  I have been recently assigned to one of these, and last year I attended the mass.  My thoughts while looking about the church were essentially that this was a magnificent structure, but not worth the lives of four men.

This year, as the date of the mass approached, I thought again about the fire and loss of life, and realized that my initial conclusion was wrong – that I had based it on modern standards.  In 1899, the only consideration was to saving the building.  No one other than the dead men’s comrades and families cared about them, because their deaths didn’t cost anyone anything.  In 1899, there were no death benefits and no pensions.  Unionization didn’t begin to happen in my job in my town until 1918.  These men had no advocate.  In 1899, the only voice that mattered to their employer was that of the owners of the building in this case the archdiocese.  This attitude was not unique to the tragedy at St. John.  It played out again and again during this era, often resulting in multiple deaths.  Four men died in a building collapse on January 24^th, 1918; six on July 12^th, 1919; thirteen on December 10^th, 1910. 

These were not stupid men, nor were their bosses.  A hundred years ago, just like now, people knew that if a building burned long enough, it would fall down.  Again, these men died because their deaths didn’t cost anyone anything. 

Safety in the workplace is never achieved through the benevolence of your employer.  It only happens when it will cost someone more to run a dangerous shop than a safe one.

Show me a job that’s unionized and I’ll show you a job that used to suck.