¿Mejor prevenir que indemnizar?. Los accidentes de trabajo en Argentina, 1915-1955 / Better to prevent than indemnify? Work accidents in Argentina

En sincronía con la sanción y la reglamentación de la Ley de Accidentes de Trabajo en la Argentina (1915) se impulsaron una serie de medidas para prevenir los accidentes laborales y las enfermedades profesionales. Las mismas fueron diseñadas en forma asistemática y espasmódica tanto desde las agencias estatales como también por los sectores industriales. El artículo indaga en los debates legislativos, las revistas oficiales y profesionales y en los soportes gráficos con el objetivo de mostrar que en la gestión tanto gubernamental como privada, en el período estudiado, primó la lógica indemnizatoria por sobre la preventiva, y ambas estrategias se conjugaron como mecanismos de resolución de los desajustes del trabajo. Estudiar cuáles fueron las políticas preventivas y a quiénes se dirigió la difusión gráfica y las recomendaciones es una vía para analizar las inclusiones y exclusiones en el proceso de delimitación de las políticas sociales. La relevancia de este punto radica en que sobre el dilema de la responsabilidad individual o responsabilidad social, se ha construido gran parte del corpus legal en torno a las políticas sociales

In line with the sanctions and regulations of the Work Accident Law in Argentina (1915), a series of measures were adopted to prevent work accidents and professional diseases. They were designed in a non-systemic and spasmodic fashion by both state agencies and industrial sectors. Based on the investigation of legislative debates, official and professional journals, and graphic materials, this article shows that an indemnifying approach prevailed over a preventive approach in governmental and private management bodies during this period and that the two strategies were combined as mechanisms for resolving work problems. Study of the preventive policies, poster campaigns, and target audiences of recommendations is one method to identify those who were included in social policies and those who were excluded. The relevance of this issue lies in the fact that a large part of the corpus of law on social policies has been constructed around the dilemma of individual or social responsibility

Miners, silica and disability: The bi-national interplay between South Africa and the United Kingdom, c1900-1930s.

This paper investigates silicosis as a disabling disease in underground mining in the United Kingdom (UK) before Second World War, exploring the important connections between South Africa and the UK and examining some of the issues raised at the 1930 International Labour Office Conference on silicosis in Johannesburg in a British context. The evidence suggests there were significant paradoxes and much contestation in medical knowledge creation, advocacy, and policy-making relating to this occupational disease. It is argued here that whilst there was an international exchange of scientific knowledge on silicosis in the early decades of the twentieth century, it was insufficient to challenge the traditional defense adopted by the British government of proven beyond all scientific doubt before effective intervention in coal mining. This circumspect approach reflected dominant business interests and despite relatively robust trade union campaigning and eventual reform, the outcome was an accumulative legacy of respiratory disease and disability that blighted coalfield communities.

From the 1930 International Johannesburg conference on silicosis, to "tables" of occupational diseases, France, 2000 onward: A comparative reading.

Through the concept of "thought collectives" in particular, Ludwik Fleck was a pioneer in demonstrating how much scientific knowledge is inherently made up of social and historical material. In this article, I propose to follow a Fleckian path by comparing the proceedings of the 1930 International Labour Office Conference on silicosis in Johannesburg on the one hand, and on the other the content of the debates that took place in France in the 2000s to revise the "tables" of occupational diseases which define the compensation rules for salaried workers in the French general (as well as the farm) health insurance scheme. The text offers an analysis of the striking similarities between these two distant sources, pointing out particularly the repetitiveness of ignorance and knowledge, and the nature of what can be admitted as a body of "evidence" in medico-legal issues such as the definition and compensation of occupational diseases.

On Corporate Accountability: Lead, Asbestos, and Fossil Fuel Lawsuits.

This paper examines the use of lawsuits against three industries that were eventually found to be selling products damaging to human heath and the environment: lead paint, asbestos, and fossil fuels. These industries are similar in that some companies tried to hide or distort information showing their products were harmful. Common law claims were eventually filed to hold the corporations accountable and compensate the injured. This paper considers the important role the lawsuits played in helping establish some accountability for the industries while also noting the limitations of the lawsuits. It will be argued that the lawsuits helped create pressure for government regulation of the industries' products but were less successful at securing compensation for the injured. Thus, the common law claims strengthened and supported administrative regulation and the adoption of industry alternatives more than they provided a means of legal redress.

Transnational dialogues between specialist and institutional knowledge in occupational accident legislation, first half of the twentieth century.

In the early twentieth century, Argentina began legislating occupational safety. Law no.9.688 legislated accidents in the workplace (1915) and granted legal jurisdiction to work-related problems. The approval of this legislation was in dialogue with proposals being produced in other regions. The links established between local figures and colleagues elsewhere are useful for examining the circulation, reception and legitimation of knowledge on a regional scale. The objective of this article is to examine the transnational references in local discussions about occupational accidents in Peru and Chile during the first half of the twentieth century.

The three essentials for accident prevention.

This article was written by Crystal Eastman when she was Secretary of the New York Commission on Employers' Liability and Causes of Industrial Accidents, Unemployment, and Lack of Farm Labor. It was published in July of 1911, in Volume 38, Number 1 of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, pages 98-107. The issue title was "Risks in Modern Industry." Eastman calls for the prevention of workplace accidents through three essentials: injury surveillance/reporting (with annual public reporting of the data); government enforcement of accident prevention laws, via departments with well-paid and well-trained officials and inspectors, fines that are high enough to be a deterrence to employers, and the power to have police shut down a factory if preventive measures are not installed; and a workers' compensation system-"a system of liability by which an employer can reduce his accident costs, not by hiring a more unscrupulous attorney and a more hard-hearted claim agent, but only by reducing his accidents."

Organized labor and the origins of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

New Solutions is republishing this 1991 article by Robert Asher, which reviews the history of organized labor's efforts in the United States to secure health and safety protections for workers. The 1877 passage of the Massachusetts factory inspection law and the implementation of primitive industrial safety inspection systems in many states paralleled labor action for improved measures to protect workers' health and safety. In the early 1900s labor was focusing on workers' compensation laws. The New Deal expanded the federal government's role in worker protection, supported at least by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), but challenged by industry and many members of the U.S. Congress. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the CIO backed opposing legal and inspection strategies in the late 1940s and through the 1950s. Still, by the late 1960s, several unions were able to help craft the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 and secure new federal protections for U.S. workers.

Harriet Hardy and the workers of Los Alamos: a campus-community historical investigation.

Harriet Hardy, protégé of Alice Hamilton, spent 1948 in the Health Division of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. The contemporary campaign for federal legislation to compensate nuclear workers brought to the fore living retirees in whose cases of occupational illness Hardy had a role in diagnosis or case management. A third case is documented in archival records. Methods of participatory action research were used to better document the cases and strategize in light of the evidence, thereby assisting the workers with compensation claims. Medical and neuropsychological exams of the mercury case were conducted. Hardy's diary entries and memoirs were interpreted in light of medicolegal documentation and workers' recollections. Through these participatory research activities, Harriet Hardy's role and influence both inside and outside the atomic weapons complex have been elucidated. An important lesson learned is the ongoing need for a system of protective medical evaluations for nuclear workers with complex chemical exposures.

Grace Burnham McDonald, founder of the Workers' Health Bureau: "you have to see it in the context of organized labor's right to survive and to represent its members".

Grace Burnham McDonald (born in 1889) was a founder of the Workers Health Bureau in New York City in 1921. She started the Bureau after her experience with the Joint Board of Sanitary Control. The Bureau assessed workplace health and safety risks, educated labor unions about these issues, and advocated for laws to ensure the highest degree of workplace protection. Her Bureau colleagues were Harriet Silverman and Charlotte Todes (Stern). Burnham McDonald supported the Bureau with part of her 1923 inheritance from her first husband. After years of effective work, the Workers' Health Bureau shut down in 1929, largely as a result of diminished support from the unions, whose focus had shifted to purely economic issues, and the dissociation of the AFL from the Bureau. In later life, Burnham McDonald moved to California, where she became involved in some of the same causes, especially as they affected agricultural laborers. An interview with Charlotte Todes Stern follows and appears on page 337 of this issue.

Charlotte Todes Stern, staff member of the Workers' Health Bureau: "we were in advance of our time".

Charlotte Todes Stern (5/5/1897-11/15/1996) was a radical activist for most her life, beginning with her introduction to YPSL (Young People's Socialist League) during her college years. In 1923, Todes Stern became a staff member of the Workers' Health Bureau (WHB), and two years later she became their Organizing Secretary. She traveled the United States organizing for the WHB until 1927. This is the third of seven interviews with Charlotte Todes Stern, conducted by Rosalyn Baxandall for the Feminist History Research Project. This interview focuses on the Workers' Health Bureau, its formation, early efforts with the Painters' union in New York, its accomplishments and efforts to obtain safer and healthier working conditions for workers throughout industry, and its organization of annual national conferences for occupational health and safety. Todes Stern discusses the conflicts with the American Federation of Labor and the demise of the Bureau. An interview with Grace Burnham McDonald appears on page 327 of this issue.

Precarious employment, ill health, and lessons from history: the case of casual (temporary) dockworkers 1880-1945.

An international body of scientific research indicates that growth of job insecurity and precarious forms of employment over the past 35 years have had significant negative consequences for health and safety. Commonly overlooked in debates over the changing world of work is that widespread use of insecure and short-term work is not new, but represents a return to something resembling labor market arrangements found in rich countries in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Moreover, the adverse health effects of precarious employment were extensively documented in government inquiries and in health and medical journals. This article examines the case of a large group of casual dockworkers in Britain. It identifies the mechanisms by which precarious employment was seen to undermine workers and families' health and safety. The article also shows the British dockworker experience was not unique and there are important lessons to be drawn from history. First, historical evidence reinforces just how health-damaging precarious employment is and how these effects extend to the community, strengthening the case for social and economic policies that minimize precarious employment. Second, there are striking parallels between historical evidence and contemporary research that can inform future research on the health effects of precarious employment.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt? Experts, lay knowledge, and the role of radiography in the diagnosis of silicosis in Britain, c. 1919-1945.

The history of silicosis provides an important chapter in the history of occupational and environmental health. Recent historical scholarship has drawn attention to the importance of patient attitudes, popular protests, and compensation claims in the formation of a "lay epidemiology" of such a disease, frequently challenging the scientific orthodoxies devised by large corporations and medical specialists. Surprisingly little research has been undertaken on the United Kingdom, which provided much of the early expertise and medical research in respiratory diseases among industrial workers. This article examines the introduction of a particular technique, x-radiography, and its use by radiologists and others in debates on the causes and consequences of silica inhalation by the laboring population in Britain during the early decades of the twentieth century. In contrast to some recent interpretations, and also to the narrative of progress that practitioner historians have developed since the 1940s, this article suggests that the use of this technology was contested for much of this period and the interpretation of X-rays remained disputed and uncertain into the 1950s. The article also questions recent accounts of lay epidemiology as an adequate model for understanding the progress of such innovations in medical history.

How historical factors have affected the application of workers' compensation data to public health.

A recent meeting of leading workers' compensation (WC) researchers was held in Washington, DC to consider ways of improving the use of WC data for injury and illness prevention. Participants identified specific deficiencies that limit the application of WC data for research purposes. For example, commercial insurers are often reluctant to provide claims records to research organizations. Unlike many other countries, the Unites States lacks a comprehensive national system for compiling and analyzing WC data, or mechanisms for linking WC data with other health care, employment, and disability records. Many of these deficiencies can be traced to historical circumstances surrounding the early development of WC laws in the United States. Inconsistencies among states developed in the absence of a federal WC system. Opportunities exist for using WC data more broadly to support public health research aimed at improving the health of populations and communities.