#dangerous work

I came from the small independent theater stage hand life...

Different beasts entirely, however, one is not better or more stressful than the other.

The biggest thing these two environments share

That thing, that big dangerous thing over there...hanging over your head or humming with electricity. Yeah, that!

In many ways, the sum of all the technological innovations was greater than its parts. Besides the changes in individual stages of production, it was the thorough integration of the plants that was so remarkable. Every plant was a maze of tracks for numerous railways, cranes, and conveyers. Raw materials moved along these to coke ovens and blast furnaces; liquid pig iron was swept off to the open-hearths at the end of giant cranes; steel ingots were shunted off to the rolling mills, where cranes and conveyors carried the steel forward. In contrast to past practices, there was far less remelting and reheating of the metal as it moved through the plants. Early twentieth-century steelmaking did not involve an assembly line, but there was definitely an integrated flow-through. For the most part, moreover, the plants ran continuously throughout the year, rather than on the seasonal basis that had characterized much nineteenth-century production. In fact, several departments ran non-stop twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. Mechanization therefore brought not only greater volume of production from the new facilities, but also greater speed and intensity and, for the workers, greater pressure to keep up. ... Most contemporary reports nonetheless emphasized how the Canadian steel industry, like its American counterpart, had been transformed by the machine. The Journal of Commerce's editor, A.R.R. Jones, applied the label "gigantic automaton" to the "typical all-round Canadian steel plant" that he visited (clearly Stelco's Hamilton plant), in which "the labor in every branch of the industry consists mainly in the supervision and maintenance of machinery." What was missing from these glowing descriptions of mechanization was what the steelworkers who worked with this new technology every day had discovered. It was remarkably dangerous. The intense heat from furnaces alone could inspire fear, but the showers of sparks from ladles of molten metal could actually sear the flesh of nearby workers. Photographs of steel production from these early years indicate how little protective clothing or equipment was used. The noise could be similarly fearsome. One man described how on his first day in Algoma's plant he could not hear a train that he suddenly discovered was passing inches from his back. Not surprisingly, an American writer found that many of the steelworkers he met had hearing problems. If the men were not dodging locomotives or machines whose tracks criss-crossed the plants, they were scampering out of the way of ladles, moulds, and great hunks of glowing steel that soared through the air at the end of giant cranes. For one Stelco worker, the first day on the job was "like entering another world." For another man at Algoma, this mechanized work world seemed like "organized confusion." Stress would inevitably become a new occupational hazard in such a fearsome workplace.”

What would incentivize people to work, for example, at oil rigs away from their communities doing dangerous work?

Would it be that they'd have a smaller expectation for how long they're suposed to work? Like, instead of you working 9-5 for 8 months instead you work 9-5 for 4 months and then can just do things you like the rest of the year?

Yes hi hello! This post re-emerged from the depths of accidental deletion!! I’m getting the bus to go get a burrito so let me talk about this one!!

Kropotkin actually talked about dangerous work; after all, some work is just inherently and unavoidably a bit more dangerous than others: so what’s the point? Why bother?

To start, resource extraction is going to be inherent to any industrial economy, but it’s worth pointing out that when you eliminate a lot of overproduction, an inefficiency inherent to capitalist economy, the demand for extraction is going to shoot down in a big way. That’s a big reason why a lot of the more hardcore environmentalist movements have been radical leftist ones; it’s features inherent to capitalism which are bringing about the downfall of the environment which sustains us.

“Do something everyday that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.” ~Mark Twain

…never say that cleaning windows is a relaxing job…

Yuriy while sandblasting the radioactive scrap metal. (Photographer, Pierpaolo Mittica.)

Inside the zone tons of metals lie abandoned, but over the years all this rusty gold has not gone unnoticed, and more or less illegally was recycled and today continues to be. Tons of metal leave the area each month. Since 2007, the Ukrainian government has legalized the recycling of radioactive metals with the blasting method. The workshop is close to the never finished number 5 and 6 reactors of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a huge warehouse where twelve men clean and recycle radioactive metals. Their work is terribly dangerous, almost a death sentence in slow motion, as it forces the workers to continuously inhale radioactive particles like caesium, strontium and plutonium.

Steel workers at work on the Cities Service Building, with City Bank in the background, 1925.

Chris Carter has threatened to release rogue bees into any M&S sex scene attempts in the next 8 episodes