In 2003 alone—the last year for which federal statistics are available—more than 5,500 workers died from injuries on the job in the United States. More than 4.3 million were injured or made sick at work—and many more such injuries and illnesses go unreported. This is the brutal reality that workers face in oil refineries, packinghouses, mines, construction sites, and other industries, as well as in the fields.

Bosses cover up their responsibility for unsafe working conditions, usually blaming workers themselves for “accidents.” But disasters like the Texas City explosion are not accidents. They are the inevitable result of cold-blooded calculations by employers.

It’s the bosses’ cutthroat drive to boost their profits that is responsible for the increasingly unsafe conditions in the workplace. Faced with inexorable competition for market share as profit rates continue to decline, the owners of capital are forced to increase the rate of exploitation. That translates into inhuman speedup, longer hours, cutting corners on safety equipment, training, and equipment maintenance—and a rising toll in workers’ lives and limbs. For example, the managers of the Texas refinery had not shut that part of the plant down for maintenance in about two years.

The BP bosses have hired many workers through contractors, both to pay them less and especially to foster divisions among the workforce and undercut solidarity. They try to pit “company” and “contract” workers against each other, while laughing all the way to the bank.

In the U.S. coal industry, bosses have been cranking up production to record levels. In western coal especially, 12-hour shifts and seven-day weeks are common, and keeping the mines nonunion is key to the employers’ profit scheme. This will inevitably lead to more methane gas explosions, roof falls, and other incidents where miners’ lives are sacrificed on the altar of coal profits.

At the Co-Op mine in central Utah, miners have taken action to change those conditions by fighting for recognition of their union, the United Mine Workers of America. In so doing they have begun the organization of the western coalfields.

Workers can’t rely on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or other government agencies to protect them. The capitalist government and its agencies serve the interests of the bosses, not working people. Any safety standards or their enforcement by OSHA or other such boards, however minimal, are the result of one thing alone: struggle by working people.

The only road to gain more control over safety and health conditions is to fight to organize unions and use union power, so that working people can bring our collective strength to bear. That means fighting in defense of all workers—whether full-time, temporary, or contracted, with or without documents. Millions can then see that job safety is a union question
 
 
Related articles:
Texas City workers discuss BP refinery blast  
 
 
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