'It is not just the deaths on the job'

By ROY PULLAM

At the Workers Memorial Day observance yesterday in Henderson,  Bill Londrigan said something that has stuck with me. 

He said it is not just the deaths on the job, it is the job-related sickness that both reduces the quality of life as well the length of life.  My dad did not die in the mines, but black lung plagued him from middle age to his death. 

I can remember hearing him trying to breathe during the night.  I can remember seeing his handkerchief filled with coal dust years after he was forced to retire. I can remember the X-rays we used to prove his case for black lung benefits. 

His lungs were covered with dust that would not let his lungs either fully expand or contract.  I can remember him having to stop and breathe when he tried to walk across the yard.  I can remember having to wash his feet because he could not reach them.  I can remember the sweat on his brow in the wintertime.  His occupation made him an old man long before his chronological age said he was.

I do not remember being born in one bed and my father being in the other with a broken back the day I was born.  I do remember my mother and father telling me of the old mule, Jack, pulling as the mule heard the slate falling.  Except for the mule, my father would have been one of the many miners who were killed in mining accidents.  I don't know whether it is not more proper to call the quality of the mining operation where my father worked as more of an expectation than an accident.

It is sobering to realize with all the advances in safety equipment nearly 100 Kentuckians died last year at work.  It breaks my heart that so many deaths could be prevented were employers more diligent in the production process. 

OSHA rules are there because they are needed--because workers are maimed and killed otherwise.  Every time I hear politicians say they are cutting regulations, I know many of those regulations protect workers.  When I hear of the hundreds of safety violations where fines are not collected, I know the employers take it as a license to push the envelope of safety. 

When we are seduced by the argument that safety rules are too restrictive, we don't think about the girl who does not have her father walk her down the aisle, when the boy does not have that dad to coach his baseball team or take him fishing and when there is no grandfather to spoil his grandchildren.