I posted about this tragedy earlier this week…
There is a lot of focus on the advances in work place safety since that tragic fire, but there is little awareness of all the current attempts to undo them…
The short American memory and attention span strikes again…
It always seems to take a tragedy to drive reform, then the reforms are quickly undone…
It’s a vicious cycle….
From Andrew Schneider at AOL News:
Worker safety advocates cite the painful irony that, precisely 100 years to the month after the fire, the House of Representatives has passed a budget bill that would slash nearly $100 million — about 20 percent — from OSHA’s current budget. About 40 percent of those cuts will be to the agency’s enforcement and safety inspectors — those on the front line of protecting workers.
“Lives will be lost because of these proposed cuts. They’re devastating,” Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, told AOL News on Thursday.
“Since its founding, OSHA has been underfunded and understaffed. They currently have enough inspectors to inspect every workplace just once every 143 years. The proposed cuts will cut OSHA’s effectiveness even more,” he added.
OSHA administrator David Michaels says the House’s cutback “would really have a devastating effect on all of our activities.”
David Von Drehle wrote what many consider the definitive book on the tragedy in 1911, “Triangle: The Fire that Changed America.” He said in the book that history can run backward, and that even much-needed reforms like worker safety gains can be lost again.
“Many of the initial post-Triangle reforms were strenuously opposed by conservative businessmen … who were soon back in the saddle and able to halt, hamstring or reverse liberal initiatives,” he wrote.
The recent GOP sweep has many believing the same thing is happening again.
via The Lessons of Triangle Shirtwaist Fire May Be Lost 100 Years Later.
Lost in the 21st Century 