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Two Hippies and the Vision of Tony Mazzocchi |
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Tony Mazzocchi was a lifelong advocate of safe workplaces and a driving force behind establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 1970.
The longtime union activist rose from being a rank-and-file member to top-level posts in the former Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union (OCAW), including health and safety director and secretary-treasurer.
He also was instrumental in founding the national Labor Party and active in the progressive movement until his death in 2002. He brought workers, environmentalists, students and community activists together in the fight for worker and community safety against nearly unchecked corporate power.
But it may have been two New Jersey hippies who helped spark Mazzocchi’s vision of coalition building, according to Mazzocchi biographer Les Leopold. Author of The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor—The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi, Leopold spoke to a lunch-time crowd at AFL-CIO headquarters today in Washington, D.C.
Leopold, a friend and colleague of Mazzocchi, told the group that in the late 1960s, Mazzocchi, then the OCAW’s legislative director, was sent to investigate the deaths of three workers by carbon monoxide poisoning at a New Jersey lead plant. Looking for some help in the investigation, he arranged for two college graduate science students to accompany him. Leopold says:
Remember now, there was this huge cultural divide then. So here’s Tony with these two kids with long hair, beards and backpacks, and they got a cold stony reception when they met with the first shift of workers.
Well, it turned out the two longhairs knew their stuff. Leopold said one of the students discovered the carbon monoxide monitors were set so high the workers could “darn near be dead” before the alarm was sounded. The other, after studying the plant’s blueprints and piping diagrams, discovered a valuable trade secret the company desperately wanted to keep under wraps.
Leopold says Mazzocchi struck a compromise with the company: Management made extensive health and safety improvements and the trade secret stayed secret.
Well, it was a completely different reception the next shift. The workers were hollering and clapping saying, “Those hippies stuck it to the bosses.” The lesson to Tony was, “If I can bring these technical kids and pair them up with these workers, we’ve got something going. If you’re going to build a movement, you’ve got to open your doors, get people with commitment, with passion for this cause.”
The coalition- and movement-building was central in the battle to move the bill through Congress to create OSHA in the face of heavy corporate opposition that had successfully bogged down the legislation.
Reaching out to the budding environmental movement, community and student groups Mazzocchi organized a series of nine “workplace/environmental” forums focused on the dangerous chemicals and toxins workers were forced to handle daily and to which communities were exposed.
The forums drew heavy media coverage and built huge public awareness. The nation’s first occupational safety and health laws was passed in 1970. Says Leopold:
Movement building was what Tony was all about.
The OCAW eventually merged with the Paper Workers to form PACE, which later merged with the United Steelworkers (USW).
The book, The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor—The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi, is available at the Union Shop Online.
5 Comments
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I just finished reading this book. It was amazing! Imagine if he had won the presidency of OCAW in ‘79 or ‘81? Imagine if he had won that congressional race? Even without winning those races he accomplished a lot. He helped bring some sort of justice to the Karen Silkwood case along with Steve Wodka and he helped usher in OSHA. I never heard of him until I read this book but when I read of his passing I felt immense sadness to have known that someone this good was here.
I had the privilege to work with the OCAW in the late 70s as they batled to provide training/education and placement services to their members impacted by the closing of a BASF plant in Wyondote MI.
The locals committment to it’s members were an inspiration to many of us , the initiative would become the first displaced worker program funded by the U.S. Department of Labor.
If only other labor leaders were as visionary, we’d have a real Labor Party. Mazzocchi started Labor Party Advocates in about 1992; the party became official in 1996 but never worked to get ballot access or run candidates until last year. Over 10 years was wasted on supporting Democrats who routinely betray our trust when we could have had a functioning and effective working class party.
Oddly enough, the favorable reviews in the union press never mention that Mazzocchi wrote this after four years of Jimmy Carter:
“When Carter got elected, the AFL-CIO was saying: We’ll make the change we need to make in labor law, health and safety laws, to give us the power we need, by electing a veto-proof Congress. And we elected a veto-proof Congress. We had a Democratic House, Democratic Senate, and a Democratic president. And we couldn’t even get a mild labor reform bill…That’s why I left DC — because this was not the way to go. Lobbying your friends was not enough.”
I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Tony back in the early 90’s. He was the ideal labor leader; full of spunk and not afraid to go outside the box!
Comment #4 is right on the money! Labor must first recognize that the politicians have only used us. (Remember when labor gave Clinton around $25 million to defeat Dole?) Clinton took the money and gave us NAFTA and NO labor reform!
I love the labor movement (despite working at a non-union job) I have held the positions of shop steward, local vice-president and even worked as an organizer. However the current labor movement has NO movement! It’s all about voting for a bunch of double talking politicians and depending on the NLRB, OSHA, MSHA and other do nothing federal agencies! We must honestly look at where we are today and study the strategies of the CIO back in the 30’s when labor made it’s most noteable gains! STRUGGLE WORKS, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU GO OUTSIDE THE BOX!!