Rob,

I am also glad these films were preserved by a brave soul. I will be using them as an instructional tool. However, I remember when Reagan assumed office we were saddled with double digit inflation, a recession, interest rates above 20% and unemployment over 10%. Reagan was not perfect but he had a job to do - a job that the American people hired him to do. Some of his choices for his cabinet were good and some not-so-good. I would have preferred my personal favorite, former OSHA Administrator David Michaels as Secretary of Labor but alas the choice was not mine and he was a teenager at the time.

My observations over the past 50 years, while employed in global industrial construction, revealed that: first world, industrial, free market, capitalistic nations provide the safest work and places of work as well as the cleanest environment. Totalitarian and communist countries are, to say the least poor, unsafe and filthy.

Long before OSHA, American industry as well as European industry had many well developed policies and practices in place to protect employees. Those industry practices were the foundation of the OSHA Standards in place today. The OSHA standards could not be promulgated in a timely manner without those existing guidance's and practices. Thankfully, OSHA Has expanded and improved on those practices immensely.

I do not view occupational safety and health as an adversarial situation pitting employee against employer but rather a team effort to provide a safe workplace environment while reducing the cost of accidents to employers. Working on a large construction site as the Project/Site Safety Manager is a challenging task. You are - at various times - the coach, referee, arbitrator, technical professional, regulatory affairs expert and representative of the employees to the employer while representing the employer to regulators. To say you are often caught in the middle is a gross understatement.

As a site safety manager/supervisor you may be replaced if you are "too aggressive" and you will probably be replaced with a "go along to get along safety manager" who provides little or no protection for the employees. When this happens you have two choices either move on and forget about the employees you left behind or contact OSHA and suffer the consequences of a whistle blower that can adversely effect you future employment. I have been terminated and blackballed and just like many of life's challenges it doesn't last forever.

If you are to succeed as a site safety manager tact and diplomacy are just as important as professional competency. Keeping the site safe and maintaining efficiency are not mutually exclusive. Most regulations are performance based and a variety of procedural approaches can achieve compliance. Encouraging job supervisors to plan their work each day and to make sure their crews have the required PPE and tools available will go a long way towards maintaining a safe site and compliance with safety rules.

I have served as a Site Safety Manager on more than 40 construction sites. Some had a safety culture second to none while others were, for lack of a better term, bottom of the barrel. The bottom of the barrel were obviously the most challenging and my successes there were the most personally rewarding. However, I was "replaced" on some of those assignments for insisting on even a modicum of compliance.

My greatest disappointments were on sites where the employees resisted compliance with safety rules even when the employer provided the time and equipment necessary and even rewarded compliance - go figure.

I started this Email to show my appreciation for the brave soul who fought for free speech and - at great risk to himself - preserved those important films for the rest of us. Forgive my subsequent digression.

Yours truly,

Jim Keating

IH/Safety Manager

Member ACS  

I discovered that The Internet Archive has a thousands of videos available for free.  As I was looking around the Government Films section and found this one which was apparently censored: https://archive.org/details/gov.osha.censored.1

 

Description: Occupational Health and Safety Administration Department of Labor United States Government The Story of OSHA (1980) This film tells workers how OSHA was set up to stem the tide of disease, injury, and death, and what their rights are under the law. Explains how NIOSH conducts tests, how standards are set, and how OSHA investigates complaints. Produced and distributed by OSHA in 1980. Then in 1981, the incoming head of OSHA Thorne Auchter recalled and destroyed most copies. A few copies were kept alive by renegade union officials who refused to return their copies. The penalty for being discovered in possession of one of these films was loosing all OSHA funding for their safety and health programs. There are 3 films in this series: The Story of OSHA | Worker to Worker | Can't Take No More This film was preserved through the years through the efforts of Mark Catlin, who made this and other censored OSHA films available for digitizing.

 

All kinds of stuff in that archive - nuclear test films, WWII War Dept films, battling anopheles mosquitos to curb malaria (featuring the Seven Dwarfs) etc.  Don't miss those entertaining ones like Duck and Cover, Sex Madness, etc.

 

Doing my part to ensure you aren't too productive working from home!

 

Rob Toreki

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