United Automobile Worker

The Occupational Disease Club

There are many different kinds of weapons which
employers use against unions and against their employes—
there are clubs, tear gas, machine guns and others. There
are also other kinds of weapons such as discharge, layoff,
speedup and other discriminatory acts. Still another group
of weapons which employers have in their arsenals are
laws—anti-picketing laws, injunction laws, compulsory
arbitration laws and others.

However, a new weapon has been placed in the hands
of Michigan employers. The peculiar thing about this
weapon is that it is a law which was enacted supposedly in
behalf of the workers themselves. We refer to the Michigan
Occupational Disease act, which went into effect Oct. 29.

The law requires employers to pay compensation to em-
ployes who acquire certain occupational diseases while
employed by the company.

What has happened here is that employers throughout
the state have been giving physical examinations to all their
employes and have been discharging in wholesale quantities
employes found to have physical defects, or to be suffering
from various industrial diseases. This is done to avoid
having to pay compensation and instead forces the public
to bear the expense of keeping them.

Other employers force their employes to take a choice
between signing away their rights under the law and losing
their jobs. Thus, an employe has to choose between working
for the next few months or years to enable his wife and
family to live and after that to be dumped on the scrap heap
without any compensation whatever, or else he can go on
relief right now or seek other employment.

We are not advocating that there should be no occupa-
tional disease law. What we are saying is that there are no
limits to which many employers will go in behalf of their
own selfish interests. There has been a lot of talk lately
about the responsibility of labor organizations to maintain
continuity of production so that the employers can continue
to reap profits. It is time something was said about the re-
sponsibility of employers to give consideration to the lives
and health of their employes when they become diseased
through working in their shops.

The consensus of opinion of the higher authorities on
occupational diseases is that there are no occupational
diseases which cannot be prevented by proper engineering
methods in the construction and operation of the factories.

Thousands of human lives could be saved and billions of
dollars in terms of wasted labor if employers would install
proper ventilation systems and use other safeguards to pro-
tect their workers. There is no other cause for the wrecking
of thousands of workers except the lust of employers for
profits—no other excuse can be made.

The union should make every effort to see that
the abuses such as have been mentioned above are reduced
to a minimum. There is no reason why the discharge of an
employe after a physical examination should be regarded
any differently than any other kind of discriminatory, dis-
charge. The steps which the union takes to protect its mem-
bers from other kinds of discrimination should be taken
here. If there is a seniority agreement with the employer
any discharge as a result of such an examination should be
considered as a violation of seniority rights.