Angela Vergara

1
Occupational Health and the Study of Labour

• Angela Vergara
• Department of History
• California State University, Los Angeles

2
(No Transcript)
3
(No Transcript)
4
(No Transcript)
5
(No Transcript)
6
(No Transcript)
7
Decent Work, Safe Work.

• The right to life is the most fundamental right.
  Yet every year 1,2 million as if 1999 2,2
  million according to 2005 figures men and women
  are deprived of that right by occupational
  accidents and work-related diseases. By
  conservative estimates workers suffer 250 million
  as of 1999 270 million according to 2005
  figures occupational accidents and 160 million
  according to both 1999 and 2005 figures
  occupational diseases each year. Deaths and
  injuries take a particularly heavy toll in
  developing countries, where large numbers of
  workers are concentrated in primary and
  extractive activities such as agriculture,
  logging, fishing and mining some of the most
  hazardous industries. (Juan Somavia, Director of
  the ILO)

8
Importance

• Health and safety as integral part of workers
  experiences.
• Understanding of the relationship between state,
  labor and capital.
• Ongoing struggles.

9
Scholarship

• Despite its importance and centrality, little has
  been done (maybe with the exception of the UK)
• Addressed by different fields and perspectives.
• Environmental studies.
• Labor studies
• Historians of medicine and science.
• Gender scholars.
• Multidisciplinary

10
The U.S. historiography

• Beginning in the mid-1980s, an effort to
  acknowledge the critical influence of health and
  safety on workers quality of life.
• The work of David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz
  we begin with the premise that the exploitation
  of labor is measured not only in long hours of
  work and lost dollars but also in shortened
  lives, high disease rates, and painful injuries
  (Dying for Work)

11
Different Approaches (U.S.)

• Historians of medicine and science the role of
  doctors and scientists, technical studies,
  emphasis on the laboratories and hospitals.
• Emergence of protective legislation laws, the
  role of the federal state and state governments,
  public health issues, strong focus on
  turn-of-the-century and the Progressive Era.
• Case studies documenting emblematic histories
  such as coal, asbestos or radium.
• Documenting workers experiences and
  perspectives. Ex The Navajo People and Uranium
  Mining
• Gender the different experiences of men and
  women.
• Studies on migration and the U.S.- Mexican border
  have discussed the use of medical exams to create
  a healthy labor force.

12
Africa and Beyond

• Randall Packard study on tuberculosis among South
  African miners.
• He has placed the study of diseases within a
  political and economic framework.
• The relationship between disease and employers
  labor needs.
• The European scholarship important work in the
  UK (many collaborative project), Spain (mining,
  accidents, disability).

13
Latin America

• Despite its importance and a history of struggle
  and public efforts to enforce legislation, only a
  few studies.
• Scholars of medicine (a growing field) have
  focused more on questions of public health and
  epidemics than on occupational diseases.
• New environmental studies have looked at the
  impact of capital on the environment and ignored
  workers.
• Labor scholars have paid little attention, and
  usually questions of health are mentioned as part
  of larger descriptions of working conditions.
• School of social epidemiology (Jaime Breilh)
• Aviva Chomsky on the health policies implemented
  by UFCO in Costa Rica, and Steve Marquadt on
  pesticides .

14
Questions / Future Research

• Incorporate workers voices, experiences and
  perspectives.
• The role of safety on class/group solidarity,
  consciousness and activism (suggested by Reis).
• To bring the community back.

15
From a transnational and/or comparative
perspective

• Concept of global industries and the need to
  compare different industries in different
  countries. The example of Jock McCulloch and his
  study on asbestos mining in Canada, South Africa
  and Australia.
• Similar state responses a pattern in the
  legislation (compensation, protection,
  responsibility).
• Transnational solidarity.
• Companies accountability local and
  international (the case of Dole in Nicaragua).

16
Sources

• State documentations ministry of labor, labor
  inspectors reports, ministry of health, social
  security office, national congress (when debating
  laws).
• Labor unions publications, demands, collective
  contract, newspapers.
• Medical doctors ministry of health, medical
  journals, memoirs, hospital records.
• Company records description of prevention
  programs.
• International organizations ILO, WHO (and its
  regional offices).
• Statistics ?
• Workers oral history.