How Workplace Safety Influenced Labor Day - Celebrating the American Worker with Randy Klatt

Back in 1892, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September of each year the Labor Day holiday.  Do you know the history and the struggle of the American worker that pre-dates this historic day?  On this podcast, Randy Klatt, Director or Region 2 Loss Control here at MEMIC helps me explore what it was like to be a worker in the late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds and workplace injuries, fatalities, child labor, and deplorable conditions were the catalysts for fair wages, the 8 hour workday, and workplace safety. Wage Trends, 1800-1900 (nber.org)   Age of workers Lewis Hine - Photographer These Appalling Images Exposed Child Labor in America - HISTORY The Photographs of Lewis Hine: The Industrial Revolution and Child Laborers [Photo Gallery] | EHS Today Teaching With Documents: Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor | National Archives Search Results: "Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940" - Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (Library of Congress) (loc.gov) Search Results: "" - Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (Library of Congress) (loc.gov)   Achievements in Public Health, 1900-1999: Improvements in Workplace Safety -- United States, 1900-1999 (cdc.gov) History of Workplace Safety — SafetyLine Lone Worker Deadliest Workplace Accidents | American Experience | Official Site | PBS Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - HISTORY Child Workers and Workplace Accidents: What was the Price Paid for Industrializing America? – Our Great American Heritage (1857) Frederick Douglass, "If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress" • (blackpast.org) Haymarket Riot - HISTORY https://www.dol.gov/general/laborday/history Labor Day 2021: Facts, Meaning & Founding - HISTORY History of Labor Day | U.S. Department of Labor (dol.gov) Deadliest Workplace Accidents | American Experience | Official Site | PBS History of the Holidays: Labor Day | History #82 - Comparative wages, prices, and cost of living : (from the Sixteenth ... - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library History of The US Minimum Wage - From The Very First Minimum Wage (bebusinessed.com) Profile of work injuries incurred by young workers (bls.gov) History of Workplace Safety in the United States, 1880-1970 (eh.net) Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch, as we're about to celebrate Labor Day. I expect that you're getting up and gearing up for family and friends around the pool, the barbecue, the yard, getting people together, trying to enjoy that day off. Well, while you're doing that? Have you ever thought about where we get the Labor Day holiday from, where did it hey come from? Why do we have it? Why was it even started in the first place? So for today's episode, how workplace safety influenced Labor Day and vice versa. Celebrating the American worker. I'm speaking with Randy Klatt, CSP director of Region two, lost control here at MEMIC. Randy leads a team of consultants serving the central and southern Maine area. So, Randy, welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited to have you on to talk about Labor Day today. Randy Klatt: [00:00:55] Thank you, Peter. It's always great to talk to you. Happy holiday. Peter Koch: [00:00:59] Yeah, it's coming [00:01:00] right up here. And, you know, I was thinking about, well, the podcast and MEMIC and what our mission is to get out there and to work with companies to help keep workers safe. And I was thinking about the Labor Day holiday. And I'm like, you know what? I've enjoyed the Labor Day holiday now. I've enjoyed time off or on the Labor Day holiday. But what is it? Where to come from? And that got me to thinking having a conversation with you actually around. Well, what was it like to be a worker? Well, before our time being a worker, before our parents, and probably before our grandparents, maybe around the time of our great grandparents, because prior to, you know, the early nineteen hundreds. Labor Day didn't exist. And I think we kind of take it for granted. So let's talk about that. What was it like to be a worker in, say, the late eighteen hundreds and what were the conditions? What was going on? And I know [00:02:00] you've been doing a little bit of reading. I've been doing some reading, too. We certainly don't have any firsthand experience, even though we're both a little grayer than we were last year. We're not that gray yet. But there are some fascinating history about work in the late eighteen hundreds. What do you think it was like out there? Randy Klatt: [00:02:18] Oh, I think it was pretty horrible, quite frankly. And there is plenty of gray. In fact, I am all gray now. So thanks for the plug. But that's the way it is. Yeah, it we when we think of the industrial revolution, we sometimes think about progress and automation and heavy machinery and, you know, the wonderful products and everything that we developed and could put out there. What we don't really think about often enough is the workers who actually made all that happen. And often the horrendous conditions that they had to work under and for what we would really call minimal pay and no benefits whatsoever. [00:03:00] Peter Koch: [00:03:01] So some of the benefits you got to go home maybe at the end of the day. Randy Klatt: [00:03:06] Yeah, that was your benefit. Maybe one day off a week and maybe enough money to put a little food on the table and keep a roof over your head, if you were lucky. It was really quite horrendous. If you look at some of the statistics regarding how much people were paid in your average manufacturing facility and, you know, the textile mills or the steel mills. It's an eye opener, even in today's standards, if you adjust these things for inflation and when you're when you're making 55 cents an hour in 1860, I'm sorry, per day. That's easy to confuse, isn't it? Fifty five cents a day. Not per hour. You know, bring that to today's standards. It's still poultry. It's just amazing. [00:04:00] Peter Koch: [00:04:00] Yeah. It's really hard to think that you could live on that. And I think that's why you had multiple people in the same family, from dad to mom many times, all the way down to the kids going out and getting a job instead of going to school or maybe after school if they had the opportunity to go to school, because, you know, you add 55 cents a day up and it doesn't go very far when you've got to purchase food and pay for rent and mend clothes and all of the things that come with just the daily burden of life. Randy Klatt: [00:04:39] Right. And you add to that the strenuous physical labor that was involved in most cases, and then the hazardous conditions. We go into manufacturing facilities today and we see some things that are well in our world. They're pretty scary. Oh, my gosh. You really need a guard on that in [00:05:00] running nip point. Well, take that back a hundred and twenty years ago, and there were things spinning and turning and pulling every which way all over the building, and no one gave it a second thought. And you sent people in there to work in close proximity to all of that every day and just accept it, because if you don't want this job for fifty five cents a day, then someone else will. Yeah. So you're almost a commodity to me is if you're not going to work, then we'll find someone else who will. Because these are good jobs. Fifty five cents a day. Oh, my goodness. Peter Koch: [00:05:38] And really, some of the only jobs, you know, when we started to see the advent of us moving from that agrarian society to the advent of the industrial revolution and people moving into cities and towns to be closer to where the work is, because they couldn't find jobs or the jobs were too taxing in the agrarian culture, [00:06:00] in agriculture and farming, getting those better jobs in manufacturing and textiles and steel and construction and carpentry, just kind of looking more at some of those wages. You know, the difference in that that textile manufacturing, daily wage of 55 cents in 1860, you could make a whole dollar, 40 a day as a skilled carpenter. Just a few years later, in in the later eighteen hundreds. So depending on what job you had, I mean, you could you could earn some decent wages rather than just being a farmhand for a while or again, dealing with all the hazards that we knew about within the agricultural society and working on a farm, getting kicked by a cow or getting caught up in some of the horse or ox driven equipment to plow the fields and the hours that were there moving into the or moving into the cities. Sometimes, [00:07:00] you know, you're trading maybe one evil for another, but you're getting paid more for it. Randy Klatt: [00:07:08] Yeah. And if not more, you're actually being paid if you work a full day in most cases. Anyway, you were actually paid for that day. When you're on the farm, any farmer out there today understands this. Clearly, it's still the case. Mother Nature rules the day. And you just might not have the crop this fall or to harvest. And you don't have enough to feed your family, much less to sell to actually make a living. So seeing these jobs was an attraction for people. Nevertheless, it was still not what we would call desirable in the way of a job today. I was interested how Andrew Carnegie got his start. Most people know who Andrew Carnegie was. And, you know, the forerunner to U.S. Steel Corporation, my gosh, in [00:08:00] the railroads and all kinds of industry. And at one point was the richest man in America. He actually started his first job in this country in 1848 at the ripe old age of 12. And he was a bobbin boy, changing the spools of thread in a cotton mill. And he had to work 12 hours a day, six days a week. So he did have one day off. And for that, what, 72 hours of labor for a 12 year old boys starting wage was a dollar twenty per week. So even adjusted to it by inflation or with inflation over the years, that equal that's equivalent to about thirty six dollars in today's numbers. Can you imagine telling a 12 year old today that I'd like you to work 72 hours this week and I'm going to pay you thirty six dollars to do it? Peter Koch: [00:08:59] I think the conversation [00:09:00] would have stopped at work. Randy Klatt: [00:09:04] Well, quite possibly. Peter Koch: [00:09:06] Good. And then you get into all the rest of the reasons you don't want to work is the limited wage. And how come I don't have a day off and. Well, you have one day off but it's not enough days off. And yeah, there's a lot of challenges out there. Randy Klatt: [00:09:20] Yeah, you probably have to pay your babysitter thirty six dollars to watch your kids for a couple, two or three hours when you go out for an evening. Peter Koch: [00:09:27] For sure. Randy Klatt: [00:09:28] Can you imagine that Peter Koch: [00:09:31] You had mentioned this just a bit ago, too, about the conditions that you'd work in. And I doing some research for this looking or you can find so many different really amazing images of workers from this time frame. And one of the most prolific photographers that were out there is Louis Hine. And some of the most famous pictures that he has are from like the steelworkers having lunch [00:10:00] on the suspended beam. Therefore, I'm not sure what they were building, you remember what they were building in that particular picture, I can't recall. Randy Klatt: [00:10:08] I don't remember which building it was. I believe it was New York City. Peter Koch: [00:10:11] Yeah, I think it was to regardless. But that's the picture that people think of when they think of Louis Hines. However, when you start to look at other photos that he took, it's really representative of the American worker in the late. Eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds. And there are thousands of photos which depict kids, really young kids, women, children, men all working together in some very dangerous occupations, whether it be textiles or in the fishing industry or in some of the other manufacturing industries where, you know, those in running nip points, you're surrounded by in running nip points. There's one of those photos we were talking about earlier [00:11:00] where there's a couple of kids standing on a mechanical loom right next to all the bobbins. And the caption is, they had to stand on the loom because they weren't tall enough to reach the bobbins that they had to change out. Randy Klatt: [00:11:17] Yeah, exactly. So eight year olds, nine year olds working these 60, 70 hour weeks around this equipment with absolutely no regard to their safety, simply get the job done. And we see that mentality some today. You know, we've got to get the job done. So we bypassed some things, but certainly not to the scale that we were doing back then, and not just with adults, but with children full time employed as fish cutters. And yeah, they cut their hands a lot. But, you know, that's part of the job. We're going to just overlook that piece because we're paying them by box. [00:12:00] So, you know, piecework was also something that was fairly prevalent, too. So it simply encouraged people to do things quicker, faster, which, of course, is often less safe. But as long as they got the job done, then they were happy to go home with their twenty five cents because they were able to get four boxes of fish cut for the day and they were paid five cents a box. So woohoo. Yeah. And you just Peter Koch: [00:12:26] Bring that extra money home to help the family get by for the week. And in those photos, you know, you often see adults with bandages or with a missing limb or a digit. And kids as well. There's a couple of images that I saw where, you know, it's captioned. You know, they're talking about the kid who has a big bandage on his hand, one of those fish cutters. And there's another photo there of all of the fish cutters, all the kids that were probably in one particular factory. And they all had knives [00:13:00] and some of the knives were as big as a kid's forearm, for crying out loud as long as the kids for he's holding this enormous knife out there. And you would be scared and today to hand a kid a knife like that. But if the kid came to work and he was part of the workforce, here you go. And the kids were proud of what they did. I mean, you can't take that away from the kids those days. I mean, they were working for their family. They were working for the wage. They were trying to do the best they can in some fairly deplorable conditions. Really challenging conditions. Randy Klatt: [00:13:35] Absolutely. And it wasn't just the manufacturing facilities either. There some great photos of the newsies. You know, there was one of the most enjoyable musicals I've seen in the theater was newsies about a young boy selling newspapers. But the reality is you have seven and eight year olds out running around the streets before dawn trying to sell newspapers, and they're getting [00:14:00] paid pennies to do so. So industry during these this time and we're talking anywhere from eighteen fifties or sixties up through the turn of the century into 1920s, it was pretty darn brutal for most people in most occupations. Not to say that it was everyone, but a lot of people made some money. Mm hmm. Including Mr. Andrew Carnegie. There is a reason he became a multimillionaire and the richest man in America. Peter Koch: [00:14:39] Certainly. And I think that's part of what we're celebrating today is we are celebrating. You know, the labor that the American worker, that through the courage and determination in some of those really challenging places allowed our country to be where it is today. And granted, we [00:15:00] are not in. The best place all the time, but we can certainly look at, especially around work, the work that we do and the innovations that have come out of the American worker and the labor force that's there. There's a lot that they've done and a lot that they've allowed us to do. And that we take for granted today. A lot of those things that we take for granted today, whether it be a day off or equal wage or a living wage, are things that came out of the labor force and is part of what Labor Day really is. And we'll talk about more of that kind of later on as we go, because we certainly didn't end with a photographer taking pictures of kids with bandages on their hands. That got us to Labor Day because there were you know, there were injuries and there are definitely fatalities that occurred. And individual fatalities happened probably more frequently than we thought. They're doing a little research. Again, there's [00:16:00] the death calendar. If you if you want to look it up and talking about an article about from achievements in public health. Nineteen hundred through 1999 and improvements in workplace safety. So there's a death calendar in industry. So all industries for Allegheny County. And it has the months of July through June in that order. And they have little red x's in each of the boxes where somebody has died. And sometimes there's one, sometimes there's multiple. And this is just one county where it occurred. And there are very few days that are blank or that do not have a red X in that calendar. It's a fairly stunning graphic to think about that back in that back in that time frame, Randy Klatt: [00:16:49] I was really impressed with the impact that that calendar has. Well, first of all, how many times have we ever seen a death calendar? [00:17:00] I mean, that's just the topic. The title itself is pretty indicative of disaster. But nineteen O' six July through nineteen O' seven and June five hundred and twenty six workers. And you're right, it's hard to find a date there where there's no red X and many of them have multiple. That's just inconceivable. And that's, like you said, one county, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Oh, my goodness. Peter Koch: [00:17:31] There's one week, August 19. Oh six where? Twenty one through twenty four. Those three days in there. Four days in there. There's an average, I think of probably four X's in each of those days, if I can peer through some of the blurriness of the reproduced image. So like one week you're talking close to 20 people, 20 people, different days, probably different occupations passed. [00:18:00] And never came back home from work. So there's that part again, where, you know, you have that that vision of leaving for work, kissing the family goodbye, saying goodbye to your girlfriend, your wife, kissing the kids, whatever, with the intent that you're going to be able to come back home and enjoy something of your labors for that day and your family to for you to come back home to. And you never do. Five hundred and twenty six people in that year in that county didn't come back in 1906, 1907. Randy Klatt: [00:18:36] Yeah. When we look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as you alluded to earlier, statistics weren't well, they certainly weren't to the point where they are today. So much of it was manual and so much of this was undocumented. So who knows really how many people died. Those, I guess, are the ones that were identified. It could have been a whole lot more. But [00:19:00] we're talking twenty three thousand people a year, in some cases, working out through an equivalent of somewhere around sixty one deaths per 100000 workers. Today's rate is somewhere just over three. So we have certainly come a long, long way since those days. Peter Koch: [00:19:24] Yeah, I think so. And you bring up a really good point around, you know, injuries, statistics being important because, you know, individual injuries and even individual fatalities will have you know, people will get focused on that and then you'll move off to the next thing. It was one person who got injured. It was one person who didn't come home. And it is a tragedy. But we don't tend to look at those individual incidences as critical. But only when you start to pull all of those statistics [00:20:00] together and you look at it as a whole. Did they become really powerful like the image that we were just talking about? So if you get a chance, go up and Google, search that death calendar for an industry for Allegheny County, and it'll pop up and you'll take a look at. And that's a really powerful image when you see all of those red Xs, because we live in an age where information is plentiful and it's easy to pull that trend together. It wasn't always that easy like you talked about before. And sometimes it really took like a mass casualty incident for workplace injuries or fatalities to get noticed beyond the immediate family and friends and the workers that it truly affected. Peter Koch: [00:20:38] And our history of work is really riddled with those issues. And again, we didn't start keeping good records probably until the eighteen hundreds and into the nineteen hundreds. But you get back you know, there are some statistics back there from a website [00:21:00] called The Deadliest Workplace Accidents in the American Experience. So back in the late 60s in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the Pemberton mill, large cotton goods factory collapsed without warning and it killed one hundred and forty five workers and injuring another one hundred and sixty six. And again, an injury back in 1860 is not like an injury. It is today in two thousand twenty one. We're going to go to the doctor, going to get good treatment. Chances that you're going to make it out of the hospital whole and return to the workforce is pretty high. Back then, you had an injury. There's a good chance you never return to the workforce. And then instead of being part of the family growing, you became a burden because they needed to support you and you could no longer go back to work. Randy Klatt: [00:21:49] Yeah. At that point, you became a real liability for everyone else, right? Yeah. We weren't talking about days of health insurance and disability insurance [00:22:00] and EMS coverage for your community. So you have emergency responders and fully manned fire departments. And we just that wasn't there. You get hurt. What are the odds that that's going to become infected or you're not going to get the right care? It could have been treated properly and you might get back to work, but there was no way to access the care. So you ended up with a disability for the rest of your life and no way to be compensated for that. It really is a sad part of this industrial revolution that we don't often think about. What did it really take and what are those mass casualty incidents that we really should know about? And then on Labor Day, look back and appreciate what people went through to get to where we are today. Peter Koch: [00:22:53] Yeah, because even after Labor Day was thought about and initially [00:23:00] celebrated, Labor Day, initially was celebrated in the late eighteen hundreds, so 1882 was that first Labor Day celebration in New York. And there's a couple of myths out there, not myths, but stories out there about competing people who suggested that you gather the laborers together to celebrate labor and to hear people talk about labor and organized labor and what you could do as a as a community of laborers. Well, yeah, that's the first the first celebration, 1882. And they talk about Peter J. Maguire being from the Carpenters Union and then Matthew Maguire from the Machinists Union were the two guys that are credited with first bringing Labor Day into the forefront here in the Americas. Randy Klatt: [00:23:50] Which obviously came from labor. And this wasn't recognized by anyone else, by the federal government or state government [00:24:00] or any other organization. It was the laborers who actually took the day off in 1882 unpaid to parade, to celebrate their accomplishments or to at least try to make people aware of the significant contribution they have. Peter Koch: [00:24:16] Yeah, so and the power that you have together that the power that you have as a group to recognize that there are some challenges out there and to really fight for the rights of the American worker back then. And there was a lot to fight for back then. And still even after they celebrated Labor Day. And again, you alluded to it took the day off, not were given the day paid to have off and celebrate Labor Day with your family. The first labor days were people didn't go to work. It was almost like a protest. They didn't show up that day. They went to New York and they marched the Labor Day parade to go to Union Square in New York City and march, [00:25:00] almost in protest. So, yeah, it's an interesting piece. We celebrate Labor Day today as a holiday or as an opportunity. And they celebrated Labor Day really as a chance back then, which is pretty interesting. Randy Klatt: [00:25:15] Indeed it is. And we're talking 1882. But if you look up some of the worst disasters in history and you started to read some of those, at least one of those on that list, there are all many years after those first Labor Day celebrations and even after it was actually a recognized federal holiday. So there were still a lot of struggles to be had down the road by workers to reach that equitable pay and equitable treatment and safer workplaces and all those things of the livable wage you mentioned earlier. Peter Koch: [00:25:54] Yeah, Randy Klatt: [00:25:54] It was still worth fighting for. And you still [00:26:00] had a pretty good chance of not coming home after going to work, especially if you were in heavy industry is still working in mining in particular. Oh, my gosh. Imagine being underground in a mine with the conditions they were in around the turn of the century. Peter Koch: [00:26:18] Oh, my gosh. No, I can't. And some of those pictures from Lewis Hine were showed groups of boys, young boys who were working in the mines. And you read some of those descriptions and what they did and they were they were the ones that went places in the mines that are grown adult couldn't go. So not only were they exposed to all of the same exposures that are hazards that an adult would be in a mine, which back then was a myriad of things that weren't controlled, everything from air quality issues to explosives to all sorts of things that never really came into play until labor [00:27:00] started to look into it and say, we need to do something about this. But the boys were then, for like I guess lack of a better term, allowed to go wiggle their way in the places and place charges and find different passages where a full grown adult couldn't go. Being a little claustrophobic myself, I'm not sure that I could do that. Randy Klatt: [00:27:22] Yeah, that wouldn't be on my list of to dos, that's for sure. And the worst mining disaster in American history occurred in nineteen O' seven. So just a few years after the turn of the century. And the wording just kind of gets to me when it describes this, the underground explosion. This was in West Virginia that kills three hundred and sixty two out of the three hundred and eighty men and boys working that day.  Oh, my goodness. Peter Koch: [00:27:55] That's it's almost a whole a whole community of people that were wiped out. You [00:28:00] know, it's three hundred men and boys, three hundred men and boys that, you know, had families to go back to. You've just cut out half of the population of probably a mining town, you know, within that one particular event that occurred. Randy Klatt: [00:28:16] Exactly. Peter Koch: [00:28:17] And it didn't stop there. And it wasn't just in the mines where things were really challenging. And we found a lot of a lot of people getting injured or killed. We talk about this often, especially if we're talking about the history of OSHA and where OSHA came out of and safety in America. One of the watershed moments, I think, in workplace safety came out of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire disaster that happened back in or on March 25th in 1911, which the history of that particular fire. Not even looking at pictures, just reading a [00:29:00] description of it can almost cause nightmares. It's pretty can be pretty scary. Randy Klatt: [00:29:04] It sure can. And a well known incident that we've learned a lot about being in the worker's comp industry and knowing that this was one of the key moments that brought forth the need for some sort of compensation for injured and fatally injured workers. But I agree. You read the read the description of what happened when this factory started to burn and where the people attempted to evacuate when there are 600 workers in this building. And of course, the fire hoses weren't working because they were rotted and the bowels were rusted shut. And so their panic ensued as they tried to get out and only a few people could fit into the elevator at a time. So, of course, eventually that broke down with many people still trapped in the building. So many fell to [00:30:00] their deaths in the elevator shafts, trying to somehow escape the floor that was on fire. And so many died in the building. But then just to learn that there were 58 people who died jumping to the sidewalks from the building, it's just that is horrifying to think about the loss, a total of a hundred and forty six people. Peter Koch: [00:30:22] Yeah, and in those the conditions in in how this all came about is the tragedy. I mean, I think I know when I've described part of this in a class before, people immediately think about 9/11 and those iconic images of people plummeting from the Twin Towers. And, you know, that's that is a horrible image to have fixed in your mind. And it is a horrible reason for those things to happen, to have a plane, a terrorist attack happen on our home soil [00:31:00] for that to occur. But in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, we did this to ourselves. Right. So the doors the exit doors were chained closed because management didn't want people taking breaks when they shouldn't be taking breaks. You know, I guess having someone work 12 hours a day, six days a week just isn't enough. Right. So. Got to make sure that they're not taking a break when they shouldn't. You know, the fire started in a rag bin. Right. So we look at this often. We go different places and we see a bin full of used oily rags in a maintenance facility. And we talk to people about, hey, this is going to combust at some point in time, like, yeah, we'll take care of it. We'll take care of it at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, something that we take for granted, the exit routes. Right. So your fire escapes were too narrow. There wasn't enough room on the fire escape to handle the occupancy [00:32:00] of the floor of the building. So when people went out to the fire escape, the fire escape collapsed. So consider that like oh fire. Right. So I'm going to go out and I'm going to go out. What I know is the fire escape, and I'm going to walk onto that. And I'm assuming that fire escape is going to hold me and it doesn't. And it collapses and prevents everyone else from escaping. And then considering the response and you said this early on, like we didn't we had some organized EMS, we had some especially in the cities, there was fire response. A lot of it was volunteer, some of it was professional. But the fire occurred on the eighth floor. The hoses only reached to the seventh floor like. So that math just doesn't add up. Right. So there's lots of things that we take for granted today that came out of these. Disasters. [00:33:00] One of those is workplace safety. In a in a focus on workplace safety, another one is building code and making sure that the building is able to support the number of people and what they're doing in there and how do they get out in the in the event of an emergency. And we tend to forget that these rules aren't there just so that our jobs can be more annoying. But they're there because there has been substantial issues. And they talk about this in the history of Triangle Shirtwaist, too, with like 18 minutes from the time of the fire to the time that was all done and all. One hundred and forty six people died. Eighteen minutes. That's crazy to think that that many people would die almost in an instant. Peter Koch: [00:33:47] Let's take a quick break. Maybe you didn't know, but MEMIC is committed to making workers' comp work better for everyone. It's been our hallmark since day one. And through compassion, partnerships and a relentless commitment to workplace [00:34:00] safety, we make an impact, whether it's our claim specialist, connecting injured workers with the best medical care and helping them understand the worker's comp system or our safety specialist conducting training for frontline staff and workplace assessments with your supervisors. We understand your industry and how a robust safety program is a pillar of any successful company. Already a MEMIC policyholder. Then reach out to your MEMIC safety management consultant for more information about resources that can help. And if not, and you're interested in how MEMIC can partner with you for workplace safety. Contact your independent insurance agent. Now, let's get back to today's episode. Randy Klatt: [00:34:45] It is crazy. And as you said, self-induced. And we see that to some degree in business today when we do mention something about the regs or the exit was partially blocked or you can't get to the fire [00:35:00] extinguisher. And, you know, those sorts of things that we always point out. And it's the overriding philosophy of, yeah, we'll get to it, but really, we have to do business first and it's not going to happen. What are the odds? Right. What are the odds that this building is going to catch on fire, that we're going to have a problem and that's not the right way to look at workplace safety. And we should have learned from these incidents. Every manager, every supervisor, every business owner should have a real good appreciation of history. So we don't repeat it. Peter Koch: [00:35:39] It's that's a very good point. There's a phrase out there for those who don't know their history are destined to step in it again. Right. Or fall into it again, or however you want to finish that particular phrase. And there's an author out. There was this quote came out of another website that we're looking through, the [00:36:00] article called Child Workers and Workplace Accidents. What's the price paid for Industrializing America? They talk about how between the years of 1830 to 1880, there's this overworks generation of Americans that reached adulthood with hunchbacked weakness, both legs, damaged pelvises, missing limbs from working in those conditions for so long. And you have a generation that has human damage that doesn't allow them to interact in the same way with everyone else that we take for granted today. And I thought it was an interesting connection, because if we just take the example of how industrial technology back in the eighteen hundreds changed a generation and moved that same phrase to today and how technology take the industrial out of it, technology has changed a generation. What kind of injuries [00:37:00] are we seeing in a lot of young people today? And it might not always be work related. It might be just someone going to the doctor because they've got aches and pains, but it's neck injuries, it's wrist injuries, it's overexertion injuries. And most of it's coming from the phone posture. The technology posture of the hunched back, the rounded shoulders, the hands together, typing with their thumbs, staring at a small screen for hours a day. And you're seeing injuries or challenges to people that are really we saw similar things from introduction of technology back in the eighteen hundreds to. So, again, that whole concept of we need to understand our history to be able to see our current day and possibly even the effect of the current day on the future accurately, too. So there's a lot in this history that we can really take forward. [00:38:00] Randy Klatt: [00:38:00] Right. That's those are great points. It's all about those musculoskeletal disorders that take place over time and know. One hundred and fifty years ago, it was manual labor in horrible conditions and long hours and no days off. That resulted in these injuries and these long term problems that people had today. We still have a lot of people working in industry and construction and such. But you're right, there are a lot more people using the computer or using a phone or a tablet. And we actually have young people who are starting to grow spines out of their cervical spine. So like bone spurs that are developing, which is not that uncommon with elderly people because you do have to hold your head up. Right. The human head weighs 12 pounds, 15 pounds, give or take. And [00:39:00] that takes some effort to hold up. We don't really think about it until we put our head down looking at the phone. Then after a few hours, our neck really starts to hurt and we ignore it. And over time, we forget the pain and we just deal with it. And we're actually starting to grow these things out of our spine that are being found in teenagers when normally they wouldn't be found until you're in your 70s. So there are workplace challenges today that we really need to face that are, you know, from different causal factors. But again, looking at history, we should be able to learn from them and find a better way. And let's listen to your safety consultant when they make recommendations. Gosh darn it, Peter Koch: [00:39:50] Every once in a while. Don't delete the email. Read it through. Think about it before you delete it, possibly, right? Randy Klatt: [00:39:55] That's right. We know what we're talking about. So interesting [00:40:00] that that even in 1911, we see this disaster and it did spur a lot of work in building codes and, you know, the sort of standards for the workplace. But it was still another 60 years before OSHA was founded. The Occupational Safety and Health Act was founded. So it took a long time even to get to that point where we actually had federal regulations about workplace safety. Peter Koch: [00:40:35] Yeah. And even beyond or even before that. So OSHA, from a workplace safety standpoint, which is near and dear to our hearts, but just from a fair labor part, like what's fair, what's fair work, what constitutes fair work that even get passed until 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act, where they addressed child labor and they addressed [00:41:00] the workday and they addressed fair wages and living wages, all which kind of come together to help the American worker be a more valuable component of the success of America. Randy Klatt: [00:41:13] It did take a long time, way too long. Peter Koch: [00:41:17] Way too long. And, you know, like we said it before, our current workplaces aren't free from problems. They're not free from hazards or free from people getting injured. We have come, like you said, we've come a long way. But the way there was really hard won. And whenever you've got struggle, there's going to be some progress. And to flip that around, Frederick Douglas, it's a quote that comes out of the, uh, around 1857. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. So you look at all the challenges that occurred back there and that started the labor union. It started to pull organized the different factions, not [00:42:00] factions, but the different groups from the different industries to come together and start to advocate for better conditions in the workplace. And those unions came forward and they fought for better hours, equal pay and safer working conditions. And actually, you know, Randy, when you think about it, that's somewhat on how MEMIC was actually formed and not on that, you know, not out of that particular quote. But really, there was a struggle in Maine in the early 1980s through the early nineteen nineties and through those struggles MEMIC was actually formed. It was it didn't come out of it wasn't somebody's brainchild because they thought it would be an awesome idea. It was a response to a crisis like a lot of this. Right. So the [00:43:00] the Labor Standards Act and the building codes and OSHA you hear many times that OSHA standards were written in blood because they were there's every standard in that OSHA standards book is because there's somebody or some body part that's attached to that, that didn't make it home or didn't make it home with the person after the incident occurred. Randy Klatt: [00:43:27] Yeah. And then early 1990s, Maine had one of the worst, if not the worst, workplace injury records. Our injury rate was really high and worker's compensation insurance was extremely expensive. And insurers were, in fact, withdrawing from the state. And we got to a real crisis point with the businesses in Maine and something had to be done. So thank goodness MEMIC was founded. An initial [00:44:00] mission statement really did talk about not only providing great insurance and great safety services, but we wanted to promote fair and equitable treatment for all workers. And that's still true today. We've updated the mission statement and our vision and values and all that along the way. But that's still at the core of what we do is taking care of people. And ideally, we take care of people before there's an injury. That's our role as a safety consultant, is to get out there and find those issues, find those emergency exits that are blocked and make sure that they're taken care of. So in the event of a disaster, we actually get people out of the building instead of trapping them inside. But when injuries do occur, MEMIC is also there to provide the insurance benefits and medical care so that people can get back to work healthy and happy as soon as possible. So it is an important mission. I never conceived of myself [00:45:00] working for an insurance company. I know I don't like to pay insurance premiums any more than anybody else does. But this is an important piece of every worker's life, and it is important. Peter Koch: [00:45:14] Yeah. And we're not saying that, you know, MEMIC was formed so that you could celebrate Labor Day, but I think it fits within the whole the whole thought of, you know, Labor Day came out of a struggle. And there's good things that come out of a struggle. And we have a long history of struggling for things and to things in America. You know, after those first two celebrations in New York in 1882, it still wasn't a national holiday like you didn't once. They all met together and had the parade in New York and they figured out which McGuire was the one to recognize as the person who suggested Labor Day still wasn't a national thing. I mean, that was [00:46:00] just New York City. And it took five more years for the first state in the Union to actually recognize Labor Day as an official holiday. And I don't have a lot of information about that. But Oregon was the first state back in 1887 to make Labor Day an official holiday. So I'd be curious if we can go back in time and kind of look at that first Labor Day. And was it just the day off or was it like our current Labor Day and certain companies you get that benefit of having a paid day off. So I'm not sure all of the labor in Oregon were paid for that first Labor Day holiday, but that was the first state to declare Labor Day a holiday. Oregon in 1887. Randy Klatt: [00:46:50] Oh, go Oregon. Peter Koch: [00:46:51] There you go. Randy Klatt: [00:46:52] Go Ducks! Peter Koch: [00:46:52] And even after that, it still didn't catch on. It's still a number of years, another five or six years [00:47:00] for more states to sign things into law. There again, seven more years. Grover Cleveland, are the president at the time finally signed the Labor Day holiday into law. So then it was a national holiday. And prior to that, in between 1887 and 94, 23 other states had adopted the holiday. And then Grover Cleveland signed it into law because it was becoming a trend, I guess, across the nation. Randy Klatt: [00:47:32] Ya he saw the inevitable, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Looked at it, decided to do the right the right thing for a change. Peter Koch: [00:47:38] And that's even that's an interesting history, because there, you know, prior to that, in that same year was the Pullman strike where the railroad workers were on went on strike for two, almost three months. And it was pretty nasty. There was a lot of violence and [00:48:00] some deaths, both on the strikers side and on the government side that tried to break it up. But ultimately, the labor won it out, but it was still, you know, still a violent part of our history. So, you know, again, 1894, a watershed time in our history to signing Labor Day as a holiday into law. But there is still a lot of struggle around that just to make it happen. Randy Klatt: [00:48:30] Yeah. Can you imagine having to riot and to get into gunfights on the streets and calling in the Pinkerton agents to protect your facility and all those kinds of things just because you're not willing to pay a fair wage or workers are complaining of unsafe working conditions? Peter Koch: [00:48:54] Sure, I don't think I can. I don't think I can. And I think it [00:49:00] highlights, you know, as we think about Labor Day and we think about the roots of Labor Day, it highlights, again, the need for both parties to come to the table rationally to talk about what's right and not what's just good for the one, but what's good for more than just the one. How are we going to be successful as a company as well as be successful as the individual? Because, you know, there are many cases where when you just focus on the company being successful and not the workers being successful, you're not going to end up being successful as a company. And we've talked about a lot of challenges, there's hundreds, if not thousands of companies out there that have not been able to be successful for one reason or the other, and sometimes it is because they didn't have the right priorities in mind when they started looking at labor. Randy Klatt: [00:49:59] After [00:50:00] all, who is the company? We want to make the company successful. And I don't know of any company that will be successful if their workforce isn't successful. They're the ones that make it happen. So protecting those workers is not only the right thing to do from an ethical standpoint, but certainly the right thing to do from an economic standpoint. We all know just the small part of that whole pie being the worker's compensation insurance premium and how much that costs of business. And just like any insurance, the more you use it, the more it costs. So you can drive those direct costs of an injury through the roof pretty darn quickly. And it would be far less expensive to get ahead of the game and take care of those workers in the first place so that that doesn't happen. Safety is always a pay me now or pay me later proposal and [00:51:00] now is going to be a lot less expensive than later. It's just that's the way it always works. Peter Koch: [00:51:06] It always does. And we can be really short sighted. And think about the not putting out a little bit now, but it's like you said, it's going to come around later. Back to you. Well, so we've been talking about Labor Day here for almost an hour. And I think it's good for us to recognize. Right. So back before 1994 or excuse me, back before 1894, even farther than 1994, right back before 1894, Labor Day didn't exist. We didn't recognize the success of and the input of the American worker, that construction worker, the textile worker, the manufacturing person, the firefighter, the police officer, the nurse, the doctor, the whoever it is, the [00:52:00] American labor, the person that's out there doing things and making things for to make America successful and then to try to be successful on their own. That symbiotic relationship between the work that needs to be done and the worker that's going to do it. And the history of Labor Day is just filled with struggle, courage, defiance, injuries. And as we've talked about, even death out there today, we celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday of September. And most of us will enjoy a day off from work sharing time and maybe a meal with friends and family. Peter Koch: [00:52:34] And it's become the last hurrah before summer ends and the school year starts in earnest. So people are celebrating a lot of things. And when we do it, it's easy to forget the history of our modern workplace and how we got the eight hour workday overtime pay holidays or even machine guards, air quality monitoring respirators, lock out tag out, fall protection, all of the tools and standards [00:53:00] that give us the opportunity to come home after work and see those friends and family. So when you're celebrating, don't forget the thousands of workers out there in retail, hospitality, food service, emergency services and health care that are going to celebrate Labor Day by working for us or in some cases with one of our loved ones. So this Labor Day, remember that it's not just a holiday from work, but it's a holiday about work. And without the lives and the limbs of the workers that came before us and the unions and officials that spoke out, we would not have the day to celebrate. There's a good chance more of us would be spending this first Monday of September in the hospital or worse yet, in the morgue. Peter Koch: [00:53:49] Thanks again to everyone for joining us. And today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. We've been speaking about the history of Labor Day and how it has influenced safety with Randy Klatt, director of Region two here at MEMIC. If you have any suggestions for a safety related podcast [00:54:00] topic or we'd like to hear more about a topic we've touched on. Email me at [email protected] Also, check out our show notes for today's podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find links to the articles and resources we used for today and our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you took a few minutes to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. If you've already done that. Thanks. Hope you've subscribed because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show. With a business associate friend or a family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even [00:55:00] better.