Guest post: Most people working today don’t remember how it used to be
Originally a comment by iknklast on Eliminate the safety regulations.
I wonder how the “let’s get rid of safety regulations” policy is going to go over with Trump’s presumed blue-collar, working man base
Most of the blue-collar workers that surround me are ecstatic about the idea. They have bought into the idea that these regulations are unnecessary, are telling them how to do their job, are keeping them from making better money…in short, they voted for Trump because of this sort of thing, not in spite of it. At a recent meeting of a group that benefits highly from OSHA regulations, they were all discussing how eager they were for OSHA regulations to go away.
I think the problem is that most people working today don’t remember how it used to be. They assume the workplace would still be as clean and safe without the regulations, because they have been told that all the regulations do is mean that they can’t move this box without two people—oh, goodness, you mean I can’t lift a 100 pound box without help? How dare they! And they believe that the big benefactor of these regulations is the government, not the working man.
Now, once the regulations actually go away, they may find out the truth…by then, it will be too late. It took a long time and a lot of hard work, and dead people, to get the rules put in place to begin with. It may be even more difficult to get them back. (And it may not…people who have known what life is like with the rules may rise up very quickly and very firmly once they lose them…we can hope that is the scenario, that they throw the bums out).
I think this applies to a lot of issues: gender equality, abortion rights, salary levels, leave days, having health care, freedom of speech… Lots of people cannot imagine how bad it was without those, so they aren’t willing to invest the time and resources required to defend them.
Yes, Alex, and I think another thing is, they don’t honestly believe they could really go away. They think they are “inalienable” and no one can say no to these rights. After all, Constitution. Don’t they realize the Constitution is sort of like the Bible – open to just about any interpretation that suits you?
Yeah, we have a similar attitude in the UK to the not-so-subtle chipping away of the Health Service. We’re just losing the last of the generation who can remember when seeing a doctor was something that whole strata of society just didn’t do because they couldn’t afford it. My working class grandparents grew up with that. You got ill? You went to the woman down the street who would try some “traditional” remedies that might (or more often, might not) help. Or you just suffered and sometimes died.
The NHS is a long way from perfect and there are some legitimate criticisms that can be levelled, but rather than try to fix those problems while understanding how much they gain from a free-at-the-point-of-access service (with no upper spending cap) people fixate on issues that are a direct result of ignorant government policy: closing beds in the name of “efficiency”, importing private sector managers, cutting the proportion of tax contibutions that go to the NHS (oh, and cutting ties with Europe where 5% of our staff come from…) People are coming to think a US style personal/employment insurance system might actually be better for them.
They have they no idea exactly how much more they will pay for how much less because they have absolutely no conception of what life was like before the “Welfare State”. They see queues and waiting lists and the fact that these things would go away under private insurance. They don’t think of watching your spouse or children die because the doctor is too expensive.
We did too good a job. We changed the world and we allowed people to forget just why it needed changing. It’s going to be a harsh wake up for many people.
This is extremely similar to those that oppose vaccination. “Why force me to take an injection? I don’t see any measles going round; do you?” and “why restrict me from carrying more than a certain weight? I don’t see labourers complaining of back problems in their forties; do you?” are essentially the same blindness: the absence of those threats is because of the legislation they dislike.
Yes to all above. Holms, I used to work in the safety field. In an oblique kind of way I still do for a minor part of my work. This has become a very prevalent attitude, closely linked to ‘it’s all just common sense.’ Which it isn’t.
I have an acquaintance who goes on frequent rants about road cones and traffic management around road works. I point out how many people used to be killed or injured prior to current practices coming along and how few people are harmed now. He subsides into a mutter. Every time. Doesn’t stop him going on another rant a week later. Facts are for the Elite.
Anyone with even a superficial understanding of the history of the Industrial Revolution would know of the horrendous conditions that were imposed on workers by industrialists and the consequent very high death and morbidity rates. Capitalism didn’t change, it was constrained by social legislation. The rather sinister deregulation mania seems to have infected most of the West.
I’m baffled by the way people these days vote against their own class interests, earlier generations knew very well where the line was. Where did members of the working class get the ridiculous idea that the government, in a democracy, is the enemy? The plutocrats who own vast amounts of capital are the enemy.
I used to do water sampling off bridges. We put up road cones and signs when we were leaning over high bridges dangling water sampling equipment down dizzying distances to the water below. When I first started doing that, it startled me how many people actually SPED UP when they reached the cones, and occasionally did a little chicken game toward the sampler (me) just to show they didn’t give a damn about the safety of some hapless government worker. Semis and other types of trucks were the worst.
iknklast, which is why the standards adopted now are not for 4 or 5 road cones in total, but one every 1.2-1.5m tapering from road edge to safe working room and back again in a defined way. In certain circumstances they also place trucks with massive light banks and a collision damper in the way as well. Even so, those things get run into a lot apparently. Some people are inattentive, some people are a bit daft and some people are reckless or nasty. Doesn’t matter which they are to the person who gets killed or maimed.
Living in post-earthquake Christchurch we are connoisseurs of roadwork and building (de)construction management techniques!
BTW, what’s the correct html coding to get a picture to appear inline here at a controlled size?
Might have been nicer if I’d sampled in Christchurch, and not in Oklahoma.
Yeah, that said, road works budgets are better than science budgets!