Why we need labor unions, labor laws, OSHA and Labor Day.

[Hubert Flottz]

Ceremony set for Hawks Nest victims

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The Hawks Nest Memorial Committee will hold a ceremony on Friday to consecrate the Whippoorwill Grave Sites, near Summersville, where at least 41 silicosis victims who worked on the Hawks Nest tunnel are buried.

snip...

Between March 1930 and December 1931, workers bored through 3.8 miles of nearly pure silica to divert the New River through a tunnel to generate hydroelectric power for Union Carbide's plant in Alloy, long operated by Elkem Metals.

Within five years, at least 764 of the Hawks Nest tunnel workers died from acute silicosis, a respiratory disease caused by inhaling silica dust. Many died while they were still on their six-day-a-week, 10-hour-a-day jobs.

Many workers were buried in unmarked graves, including a cornfield outside Summersville, after their bodies were hauled away from the tunnel area. Read More...

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201209010079

[1GirlieGirl]

1. One of the many things I don't get about my teabagging co-workers

I live and work in the Philadelphia area - a strong historically union-friendly town. I and my co-workers are all members of a big, powerful labor union. My white working class co-workers are always daring management to "try something" so they can bring the union into any and every dispute. And yet every one of them talks about President Obama like he's pure evil. They all say they're voting for RnR because that's who has their best interests in mind. I just don't get it.

[ballabosh]

6. I don't get it either.

My father in law was a big union firefighter back in the 60s-70s, but he can't see how the conservatives are intent on crippling unions.

Actually I kind of do kind of get it. He fought fires during the riots in the late 60s and was actually shot at while fighting a fire in a south side Chicago neighborhood. So his whole opinion of African Americans is, I think, based on that: every African American is a rioter who will try to kill white people who are trying to help them. Not that he probably liked them even before that.

[Live and Learn]

2. Funny, I've seen many of the RW persuasion proudly flying their flags in my area.

I don't think they have the slightest idea what the holiday represents. They really should insist on working Monday.

[HockeyMom]

3. OSHA and Special Needs HS kids

I worked at few years ago in Florida in a HS with special needs kids. There was a very deadly virus going around (don't remember name) and a couple of the kids were vomiting in the classrooms. I have had a lot of OSHA training in schools, and group homes. I told my co-workers NOT to clean up the vomit. They had neither the supplies nor the training to do it. I called the custodians, who REFUSED to do it. They said it was OUR jobs to clean up after "our" kids. I told them unless the district gave the staff the training, AND NECESSARY SUPPLIES, we were not going to do it, for our own SAFETY.

I suppose the Republican thinking is that we are all disposable; the kids and the staff who work with them. Only FOR PROFIT employers rights mean anything. Don't like it? Get a REAL JOB.

[Hubert Flottz]

4. Hawk's Nest Tunnel tragedy ("considered to be the nation's worst industrial disaster,")

Snip:
Details of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel tragedy, considered to be the nation's worst industrial disaster, have successfully been kept under wraps for years, but now that Union Carbide has moved on, people feel they can at last talk about the horrible details of this shameful time.

During the 1930s Depression, men were desperate for work of any kind. When word got out that there were jobs in the West Virginia hills, hundreds of black migrant workers from the Deep South hopped trains and rode north to the coal mining fields. But the jobs were not mining coal. Instead, a company needed workers to drill a tunnel through Gauley Mountain, located between Ansted and Gauley Bridge in Fayette County, West Virginia.

The 3.8-mile Hawk's Nest Tunnel was an engineering marvel. The tunnel's purpose was to divert water from the New River through the Gauley Mountain and down a drop of 162 feet to provide electricity to the Electro Metallurgical Company, a subsidiary of the Union Carbide Corporation.

Construction of the tunnel began in June 1930. Workers moved forward from 250 to 300ft per week through 99.44% pure silica, 32-36ft in diameter. Experts knew that miners who inhaled silica dust would contract silicosis, a deadly lung ailment. But the company ordered that the workers use a dry drilling technique that would create more dust because this method was faster and cheaper. Read More...

http://www.tunneltalk.com/Hawks-Nest-Tunnel-tragedy-Sept09.php

[Hubert Flottz]

5. Much more information, pictures, maps and drawings here...

http://www.geo.wvu.edu/~lang/Geol484/HN-shorter.pdf

[ballabosh]

7. We need to move Labor Day back to May 1st where it belongs

It's funny that the May 1st origins of Labor Day began in this country and it's still celebrated as Labor Day all over the world, except here.