Unknown Speaker 00:01 And what they're doing here. This is this is the seventh workshop on reproductive hazards and reproductive choices in the environment. And I think that's where we start that when people come in, they'll still sort of be up to speed. And then, so speak louder. Unknown Speaker 00:22 This this has to be recorded. Okay. My name is AJ, I work for an agency called a wood house. I'm stationed at John Jay high school in Brooklyn, New York. And I do adolescent sexuality counseling for problem or teen choice. Unknown Speaker 00:42 One eye candy. I'm a student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and focusing on environmental work. Like Unknown Speaker 01:00 to do things with indoor air pollution. Unknown Speaker 01:04 I have Well, I mean, I'm changing fields. So really, I want to trespass sounds like Unknown Speaker 01:20 when you were doing the biotech stuff was was that a factor in your there? Were people talking about Unknown Speaker 01:27 occupational health? Oh. Well, it was Unknown Speaker 01:33 mostly my choice. Unknown Speaker 01:43 To bear children during the Age of everything. Unknown Speaker 02:02 Whether there was really a choice, I think it's one of the things we want to talk about it if that's really what we mean by choice. Unknown Speaker 02:12 My name is Dr. Arthur option. I'm a Filipino physician. I was medical director of a USA already funded health care facility for us and refugees in Pakistan. And here as a student, the School of Public Health at Columbia. Unknown Speaker 02:27 Great. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 02:30 My name is Sandy Tria, and I'm, I'm a master's student at Buffalo. In women's studies, American Studies, and focusing on personal issues, two projects, the slash thesis. Environmental cancer is the effect on your labor force. Not specified yet. But this is also an issue that I'm considering focusing on Unknown Speaker 03:01 some Unknown Speaker 03:06 my releases mother Unknown Speaker 03:15 but you also teach be fair to Unknown Speaker 03:18 the teachers Special Education. I am a master of science and natural utilisation. And I speak in a I've worked in training school Unknown Speaker 03:29 to make sure that eventually retired Unknown Speaker 03:31 young adults in the Bronx, you are part of the Board of Education. Unknown Speaker 03:41 Well, I'm Elise Fitz sands, and I'm the Assistant Director of Legislative drafting Research Fund at Columbia Law School. I'm an attorney and I'm also a doctoral candidate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and public health, specializing in occupational health. And I've worked on the industrial hygiene mod project brief. Come on in. You get to say who you are, every day. I worked in the industrial hygiene law project brief and the recent Supreme Court case, International Union of auto workers versus Johnson Controls which concerned reproductive hazards in the workplace. And I guess that's really why I was asked to speak here. And then silence for your committee on application safety now. Unknown Speaker 04:31 We're a coalition of labor unions in New York City. We have about 200 local unions that are members, thank you for the individuals. My background is far less academic. I came out of this becoming a shop steward in several places meeting asked about my job. Unknown Speaker 04:47 And our two newcomers to speak up real quick, Ray. Oh, great. Well, yeah, we'll start with just say who you are for sure. For posterity. Unknown Speaker 04:59 Pamela And Unknown Speaker 05:02 1989 Great unless the Barnard alumni coordinate sex education programs for university, Unknown Speaker 05:14 Oh, good. Well, what's this with this person? Students? Did you want to save the work for the record to Unknown Speaker 05:22 do volunteer work for the pressure on coalition? Yes. Unknown Speaker 05:25 Oh, great. Okay. Unknown Speaker 05:27 Well, um, we will all have outlines or hope you do, I'm going to, because we're half hour behind and starting, I'm going to bridge my comments enormously. What I'm going to do, which shown would be heresy in the law school is ignore the precedents. They're on the outline. And if you have questions about them, ask me. But I want to get through some general points rather quickly, so that Dan can make her general points. And we can throw it open to your comments, because I think the comments are really valuable. And I'm sure that after a day like today, you have lots of things you want to say. And time is really, unfortunately, really cropped for us. But those points are there to sort of say that's what the law was, until the case I just mentioned Johnson Controls. And I think that's an important starting point in a way that I had wanted you to understand what Johnson Controls came from a legal standpoint, we can't really do that. But I think that what happens in Johnson Controls is a very good example of what Bill absolute was talking about this morning, when she said that, we allowed ourselves to be co opted in the failure of soul vision and neuro as she called it during the last decade. reproductive health hazards in the workplace are unfortunately, one very brutal example of that failure Cyanamid in particular, on that outline being a very brutal example. And we've allowed this question to be defined in terms of discrimination and reproductive choice, rather than occupational health by a conservative male view of the law, which is rooted in a concern for avoiding economic costs of curing dangerous working conditions. So that some of the important economic issues surrounding women's empowerment to change conditions in the workplace have been confused with these issues of personal autonomy and choice about reproductive decision making, even though that that analysis doesn't really work, in terms of how a corporation makes a decision about how to go about a compliance with an occupational health law or problem. Okay, so consistent with the goals and approach of scholar and feminist conference, I'm going to discuss some theoretical problems that come up in the law, Diane is going to talk about some of the practical grassroots problems that come up. I'm going to jump ahead now to to Johnson Controls, which was just decided on March 20, of 1991. And as I said, if you have questions about the lawyers, but I can't tell you how far removed from the way you're supposed to do things, this is a great freedom that being informed that I'm not going to talk about the prior cases. Okay, Johnson Controls was about a workplace where women were not allowed to work if they were reproductive capacity, if they were of childbearing or reproductive capacity. And I want to point out that in that case, the employer was very careful in crafting what they call the fetal protection policy, in such a manner, that it was not on the face of the of the policy itself. It was a written policy, that one had to be sterilized to comply with that policy. It just happened that if you were still we were just about the only woman that could comply. But that's important, like other cases. But because of the fact that the Supreme Court unanimously decided that this policy was wrong and illegal, and that women had to be allowed to work in these workplaces. And whether or not that's with regard to dangerous, something we're going to talk about. It's considered a major victory in the women's rights movement, it's considered a major advance for reaffirming women's rights to the workplace. And all that remains to be done now is clean up the workplace. Unknown Speaker 09:41 And so if you think of it from that perspective, Johnson Controls may not only have ended fetal protection policies, it may actually heralded a new day in Occupational Safety and Health compliance, because now we know that compliance with occupational health square only fits within the context of gender neutral, non discriminatory, discriminatory policies, whatever that is. And that it has to somehow comport with notions in Title Seven. Okay, the Supreme Court just said that you have to let those women in the workplace regardless of reproductive risk, and you can't argue that because there's a risk, you're going to keep them out. And that's significant because in the past, occupational health policy said that so long as you didn't harm the workers or violate the standards of OSH act. It was okay to exclude people. It said it in de facto way. Okay. So, I would like to look at four occupational safety and health aspects of this decision, separate from the issue of what whether Title Seven should or should have not been used, whether this was really an exception to Title Seven, it was originally painted, things like that. And just talk about the basic problems that I see in applying what will someday be called gender neutral, non discriminatory industrial hygiene programs. Okay. Unknown Speaker 11:16 I think that the occupational health implications of the Supreme Court decision in Johnson Controls clearly transcend questions of fetal health that were presented in the case. The courts clear pronouncement regarding Title Seven, stopped short of discussing the precise mechanisms for implementing these programs. So appreciating the long term implications of the notion that everyone has the right to be hired, regardless of risk requires a detailed analysis of several aspects. First, the requirement that employers fashion, non discriminatory gender neutral mechanisms, requires rethinking our notions involving protective clothing with the kind of graphic simple first example. Industrial Hygienists have long noted the problems that arise when attempting to protect women workers with ill fitting clothing that was designed for men. And literature describes the possible leaks and the preventable exposures from what are called recognize hazards in the OSHA law, when what we used to call standard clothing does not fit women properly. And this is also a problem with respiratory protection. Because previously, they had accepted the premise offered by clothing manufacturers who claim that there's no market for so called Special sizes required for women. Now employers must re examining, re examine their compliance programs to ensure that the necessary protections to provide safe and healthful employment do not have different implications. Now, think about this a minute if men receive protections from harms, whether it's through the clothing or the respirator, but women face a high risk without the appropriately tailored protective clothing, while experiencing the same working conditions, the employer has in effect created two sets of working conditions that are not equal. They're providing one group with the opportunity to safe and healthful employment as required in the terms of OSH act. But another group is not have meeting that requirement. And in fact, they're receiving unsafe and unhelpful employment. So the failure to provide properly fitting equipment or in the alternative, the failure to make the workplace so clean, that everyone could work, there might now constitute a disparate impact violation of Title Seven, and that would be without regard to the employers intent. Second, there's a long standing debate in occupational health, about what was called performance and specification standards. The traditional view is that specification standards like lead standard in the Johnson Controls case, say, the specific parts per million that are acceptable in the workplace or the specific exposure that's allowed. And beyond that limit, it is not acceptable. But employers have long argued that this was really not a very good approach. It doesn't give them the latitude to change the the mechanisms for compliance, they can't easily incorporate new technologies that may come along and make it possible to do something even better and cleaner than the standard. And so they finally gained some credibility for the notion of performance standards. And you could even argue that fetal protection policies were some kind of performance standard gon arrive. But now the question is going to come up, that there'll be this opportunity to do something maybe a specific specification standard won't really work for Well in that context, because it will be a general level of equally clean workplace, but not necessarily meeting the equally safe and equal healthful needs of different populations. Okay. This brings up the third point, Johnson Controls did not address the inherent conflict, which I think is going to trouble us a lot in future cases, between Present public health methodology, and notions of discrimination. And I think you'll see, you know, in public health, we stratify by what age and sex and race, we don't look very much social class, because we're not quite sure how to make the socio economic divide. But these things happen to be the suspect classifications in Title Seven. Now, there are some people that quite rightly argue that there were problems with these epidemiological methods, and they need to change. But the fact is that they're the tools we have right now. And that when you want to target specific strategies to help high risk groups, your even your notion of how they're high risk is going to come from these same classifications. The court didn't address this, and I think this is somebody's going to come up again and again, until we think of how to address this in this equally safe and equally helpful workplace. Lastly, and I think this is the part that as feminists, we need to be very careful in targeting our reproductive health strategies. The decision leaves clear what the court wants people to do in the practical context when they're confronted with a transgender embryo toxin, or something that even disproportionately has adverse effects on maternal health. In those cases, there are two possible outcomes, okay. One is that employers might try to merely inform women or potential parents of the risks without any employer obligation to provide additional production or accommodate their needs, and then let the workers suffer the consequences. Would it then be presumed that they accepted those extraordinary risks? Under the assumption of the risk doctrine, I want to point out that assumption of the risk doctrine is contrary to modern labor legislation. In the 19th century, it was the prevailing common law view. And people work very hard through the progressive movement in the early 1920s 30s, through 50s, to be rid of that doctrine, but this clearly opens the door if in fact, you could just inform people and let them take on those risks. Okay. And even though policies like that are contrary to the intent of modern labor law, I could see the conservative movement very clearly saying, Well, this is a new set of hazards with a new set of responses, opening that door. And I'd like to think that the clear mandate to allow women into high risk employment also requires employers to fashion strong policies to protect them. But what happens when a pregnant lab technician wants special exposure? Mom, is an employer's failure to provide such protection, a basis for discrimination claim? I think so. But discrimination law, again, which doesn't effectively reach health issues, isn't going to tell us what standards to apply. And this decision doesn't offer us criteria. What happens though, when an employer wants to require a pregnant worker to have special monitoring equipment, and for whatever reason, she presumes the additional protection is uncomfortable, or stigmatizing. Somebody's going to joke with her and say, Oh, we're wearing that stuff. And you think you're gonna get your work done? And she sees it in an encumbrance to her ability to perform her job? Could she then say, well, I've been informed to my risks, and I have the right to choose, and I choose to assume those risks. I would like to think not, but again, I think this is an area where we're going to see litigation. I think there's a lot of room for courts to misinterpret this. And I think this is a likelier misinterpretation. This is a dimension that Title Seven couldn't address and that the court did not address. So in the meantime, industrial hygienist and Nikon and people like that, armed with occupational safety and health regulations, are going to grapple with these very sophisticated unanswered questions. This facet of high risk exposures goes beyond that false dichotomy of women's rights versus fetal rights we heard so much about in the Johnson Controls case, and draws in the dimension of how to implement sound principles industrial hygiene. We all hope that further research into reproductive hazards experienced by men and women will be one of the many logical consequences of this decision. In addition to greater retention, but what do we do in the meantime? In conclusion, the Johnson Controls decision in fairness to the people who favored discrimination analysis, winning in this case. In fairness to them, it renews our faith in the courts and our legal systems ability to provide social justice, and rekindles. Our hope that law can correct social loans. It's like the court waved a magic wand and disregarded an entire string of unfair and unjust cases that I was going to tirade about. And in cases that had very strange results, and had been considered good law. The decisions all but cured my cynicism from the last decade, a decade where there were a lot of hurtful cases like Cyanamid, which very nicely confused, immoral policies and language about moral judgments by individuals. And I still wish the same that had been appealed and reversed. But the fact is, that by remaining silent with the scope and content of industrial hygiene requirements, the Johnson Controls court left in tech the primacy of OSHA approved methods to achieve equally safe and equally helpful results. Unknown Speaker 21:20 So what happens we have to be vigilant. We must pressure OSHA to use its statutory authority to create in the words of OSH act, metal medical criteria, which will assure insofar as practicable, that no employee will suffer diminished health, functional capacity and to assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women. Without question, there's ample authority to do this, but OSHA enforcement must be improved. Hopefully discussions now underway to introduce OSH Act Amendments concerning the right to act through joint safety committees, which we hope will be announced on workers Memorial Day, also the 20th anniversary of OSH act, April 28. will provide for for open discussion and resolution of these troublesome issues. To be meaningful, the right to act, as it will be advocated must also enable individuals to bring OSH act claims, whether they act alone or as a class, whether we can really achieve that is another question. But we know we can try for safety committees. Such legislative changes and OSHA may resolve issues the Supreme Court did not address. In summary, there should be clean workplaces that are safe for every working men and women. But we must be vigilant in two important regards. First, we must recognize that employers are legally responsible under OSH act for ensuring that our personal reproductive health decisions will not be undermined by the presence of reproductive health hazards in the workplace. Second, we must empower ourselves with the knowledge needed to demand safer and cleaner working conditions, with awareness of our right to act against those hazards, then the Supreme Court's decision in Johnson Controls will mean not only the end of the dark era of speed, also called protection, but the beginning of a bright new era in reproductive health. Dan Unknown Speaker 23:38 questions first? Or I don't know how do you want to work this small group of people change and keep it to formal? Unknown Speaker 23:46 I think you I think if you give them a chance, if you speak now, it'll give them a chance to just keep talking till the end. kind of liked that open ended component. Because they've listened to all day. Unknown Speaker 24:02 That's why it happened. Unknown Speaker 24:06 No, no, take your 20. Unknown Speaker 24:09 It's it's interesting. I really liked listening to these because it was much more optimistic than I feel that I need to hear that. But I want to tell you that I emerge from the Johnson Controls case with my cynicism intent. And I want to talk about what occupational safety and health in this country means because it is not really a case of enforcing currently existing laws and were one because they're not being enforced. Number two, if they weren't enforced to the letter of the law, people would still be dying and sick every day. So I think that Johnson Controls I just wrote a few notes on one of these. Just kidding. I think that it absolutely was a major victory and women's rights movement, and I'm very happy about that. I think that it's wonderful that we've gotten that aspect of it behind us. I do not see it as a new day and safety and health compliant. And I want to talk about safety and health compliance in this country has made me cuz it's really appalling. There is an article that was in the nation a few months ago, January 28. And I just not being scholarly type don't have this here did shambling in my life, I apologize so let me just let me just tell you how many people do do you think your died because of workplace related accidents and injuries in a given day? How many people do you think die every day? Unknown Speaker 25:40 300 people look for such a major airline going down every day. You ever see it in the papers? In the US? Yeah. In the US? Yeah. That's that's a major airline are going down every day. When do you ever hear it? That's it. You don't? What would happen? I'm just quoting Carly shaken who works as a professor of work in technology at UC San Diego says, if these were lawyers getting killed if there was an epidemic of deaths among stockholders, everybody was doing pieces with the doing pieces, the New York Times 60 minutes, you name it. I think that's right. We have we have major airlines going on having crashes every once in a while, and it's going to pay for for weeks. During its investigation upon investigation. There are lawsuits, it's all sorts of stuff that happened. That does not happen to the people who die in the workplace. Curious, um, I don't have any statistics on it. But I would love to have a study of how many of these deaths are actually legal within the ocean limits, because the OSHA limits are hardly inadequate. And again, I haven't seen a study like that. I think it'd be a very interesting study, because my guess is that a lot of fun with Rico. OSHA, which is the National the Occupational Safety and Health Act, is the federal piece of legislation that is supposed to provide a safe and healthy workplace for workers in this country. It was patronizing Saturday. Again, I'm not going to throw out a lot of numbers. But I think that there are a few that are significant. There are roughly between 60 and 75,000 chemicals in use on a regular basis in workplaces in this country. 60 to 75,000. You know, how many of those are regulated under OSHA that includes fewer than 500. So that does not mean that every single one of those is hazardous. But my guess is that a lot more than 500 of them are. So let's take this. So you have this 70 or 60,000 chemicals under 500 are regulated of those. The standards were based on there's there's a group called the association is acgh, the new American American Council conference, a high chance they're a group that is basically industry and covering with industry related industrial hygienist who do a lot of studies who do a lot of, of the research on workplace hazards. And they come up every couple of years with what they think this is the parts per million thing that Elise talked about earlier, they come up with how much of a certain set of things in the air, if you breathe it in, does it take before you get hurt, so they take us average? And the averages are based on a lot of scientific data, including some things that were really expensive to me when I first started reading that like, like, how much in the laboratory? So this is a short like question their laboratory experience? How much of it do you have to have before half the ROTC experiment died? That's, you know, LD 50, the lethal dose for 50% of that. So there's like a lot of this, just even the way their methodology works is very offensive to me. Maybe it's because I don't know what I'm saying. And perhaps this is a standard practice. That makes some sense scientifically. But as a worker, I was really upset. So they said the ACGIH is this group of basically industry industrial headsets, they come up with these numbers every two years. The OSHA standards we have now with very few exceptions, are based on that group's numbers from 1968. I think about this, that's a long time ago, there's been a lot of work done in the last 22 years. It's not incorporated into most of what the standards are. So again, if you're typing this is the laws of land and what occupational safety and health should be. My thesis is clear that you cannot learn running into matters that it's a question of the law, placing workers in a lot of different contexts, not just occupational health, replacing workers as a second class. Citizens can use the analogy because this is an Environmental Conference as well. If you use the analogy of OSHA versus EPA and how they are structured, EPA has a couple of things workers would really kill for number one, on the average their fines are about 10 times higher than OSHA So if there's an environmental environment being outside the workplace or occupational being the same thing, but inside the workplace if there's an environmental disaster, just even, you know, forget the realities is the statutory fines are about 10 times worse, or 10 times higher, I should say 10 times better for EPA violations and for OSHA violations. So that's that's one place that we're starting at. Unknown Speaker 30:27 EPA had something that I don't know when it was instituted, but I think the tremendous idea, it's called the Superfund, so everybody heard of it. That means it means that the company comes in and messes up the environment, it can be in the community, they are held accountable for it. And so they have a super fun that employers pay a tax on, and it's money goes into a pool, and it's used to clean up that community, when it's an environmental disaster happens. I think, and I'll get to this later. My conclusion is that we shouldn't have similar Superfund for workers that affect our industry is devastating a community either in terms of Occupational Safety and Health and plant shutdown or whatever you have, that there should be a superfund for workers. But right now, there's more money out there I again, for me focus, absolutely. I came in the middle of her talk and absolutely loved it. But she talked about how to her environmental things dealing with people in addition to a lot of, you know, the whales with trees and a lot of the other things that the child had concerns about, but but we have more geared towards the the environment towards the flora and fauna, anything here because people in this country, particularly for workers, so I wanted to give that as a backdrop there and others. Well, I'll leave it at that in terms of the backdrop of what OSHA is and what our shift isn't. So I'm pleased that we cannot rely on OSHA, as as a way to clean up workplaces. OSHA does have something that is called the general beauty bar. And that's what Elise was quoting from when she said that it is an employer's responsibility to provide a safe and healthy workplace. It is and it's ocean for said that would be wonderful reports that bring up the OSHA inspectors, even in the best of all worlds. You know, you will never have enough OSHA inspectors for every workplace in this country. And when accidents happen, no one else is a car I mean workplace for they're happening because of things that are very immediate, that are happening on a daily basis. So it's really not structurally the best way to enforce safety and health regulations to happen outside of stressors. Given that they're given that that's the way our system works. Right. Now, the other just the other set of analogy or numbers I'll grab here is that if you take the number of motion inspectors invited to the number of workplaces in this country, we have a better chance to see like I've seen Halley's Comet, then you can see an ocean span which is whatever 70 to 74 years, something like that you have I mean, if you just do it strictly number by number, you have a better chance of seeing Halley's Comet again, it's not going to be the way that we clean up our workplaces. So that's the backdrop relating that to reproductive health. Again, just another sort of loose piece of information here, ACTA, this group that makes certain standards has a policy, a specific policy that they will not consider reproductive health as part of how they create their numbers. Because it doesn't affect the worker that affects the fetus. Now, for all of us who are pro choice in terms of abortion, right, this creates a very sticky situation. And that's what I want to get into here a little bit, because there's been a debate around the job. Labor, unfortunately, the way that it's come down is labor versus the very traditional mainstream reproductive rights groups. Unknown Speaker 33:51 Similar basically, Unknown Speaker 33:54 put up against them. But there is a coalition of others of others involvement is Unknown Speaker 33:58 reflected into me. That is the heart of what this group has to think about, though, because what happened is, this was very clever if you go back to 1979 9089, to 81, and reblog, a few articles by the conservative authors who should remain anonymous and nameless that they're not famous. But you can you can find it by the titles of the articles. Okay. There was a plan all along to divide progressive movements with this very divisive tactic, and it worked. Now, it wasn't, it was a no lose situation for them. Because if they lost Johnson Controls the way they did now, they have still left our groups in such disarray, that it's hard to come up with a coherent, cohesive voice of where women can talk about reproductive hazards in the workplace, and choice and autonomy and other workplaces. issues, okay. Their hope was to really when they could blow Title Seven out of the water, and they could get out from under the OSH Act requirements that you pay for your hasn't been cleaned up. Because OSH act is very clear about this, there's Supreme Court cases that say Congress had a chance to think about what it costs to clean up the workplace. And in fact, it thought about it. And if it wanted a cost benefit analysis or some limit on the expenses, employers can expand, to clean up, it knew how to ask for it, and it would have said so but in fact, it didn't. Title Seven, by contrast, says very clearly, that if it's going to affect the economic viability for interest, and in your enterprise, there's a real problem. There are ways out, and there's the judgment rule, the business necessity defense, which Johnson Controls did at least in the appellate courts enjoy having, which said, it costs too much to make this clean enough. Therefore, this issue is okay. And what you're talking about right there is the heart of their strategy, and how their strategy worked. And our job is to think of how to get back to where we started for you when in fact, there were those coalition's and were, in fact, there was a cohesive mass of people who could walk in and demand those health protection. And right now, it's couched in in a really dichotomous manner. We have to break past that. Unknown Speaker 36:31 Yeah, I think that's what Bernie said. earlier on. I just looked at one of the phrases she used. She said something about, she was talking about the Persian Gulf War, but she said something about how we have to get the upper hand in terms of the debate. And there's a turning aside Misaki to use the US International secretary treasurer Dini that I'm a member of if you are comfortable in atomic work, assuming because one of the key people in terms of it who got OSHA pass, you want to disseminate something in addition to step four, but I think it was an important step forward. And one of the best lessons I think, that I've ever learned from Tony's when he said, Whoever frames the question wins the debate. And in fact, the example that he used to me when he was explaining it to me is he said, Look at the abortion brand. Can we hear, we clearly have Tony being pro choice, we clearly have a moral upper hand in that. But they've had the slogan, they call it right to life, how can you argue against that from the very beginning, they framed in terms of the debate, and that's what makes, that's what it's making us struggle with year after year. Now, one level, that's a little simplistic, I think that that struggle that exists either way, on the other hand, I think is extremely important in terms of how we frame the terms of the debate. So I just want to tell you about this issue, that's become a conflict in the in the Johnson Controls case in in reproductive, occupational reproductive health generally, because I think it's important that we all think about it. It's very complex. And at first glance, even when i It's the first time that I read, who I now consider the opposing view to what I subscribe to, when I first read what they were saying, was very seductive and made a lot of sense to me as a feminist and as somebody who was pro choice. I think where it's flawed is in its definition of what pro choice means. It means pro choice, convenience, the right to have a healthy time, if you choose to, does not just mean the right to an abortion, I think that's where we get caught up. So all of this is around, I've just given the backdrop that says that OSHA is not the be all and end all for getting a safe workplace, workers compensation briefly. It's also not the be all and end all. And it's one very limited to all of these tools, but they're very limited. Workers comp is only money, limited amount of money that's available to you after you've already heard on a job, the amount of money that's paid out was not enough, in most cases to be an incentive for employers to clean up the workplace. It's merely throwing you some bugs just like disability does. It's sort of like a Social Security kind of system. It's not it's not a good tool to clean up the workplace. So those are two of the three legal strategies that we as workers have. The third is tort and I'm really nervous talking about the law absolutely no problem. How my. Shots Unknown Speaker 39:29 our tort rights as workers are very limited. This gets back to work with a second class citizen. If you are hurt off the job, the client Well, all right. I'm not working today. Fine. You're a trick on the way out. I can sue bargain I can get money. Right? So anybody who wants to bargain here's a work assignment. What happens if the least trips on the way on what does she get hurt is what she gets I want you guys to barter. Because we're consulting workers compensation is considered an exclusive remedy. What that means is that no matter how egregious the syndrome and how negligent they are, no matter how horrible your damage, you cannot sue your employer, because workers compensation is an exclusive remedy. You can get into three kinds of taxes that you cannot sue outrageous use really outrageous to separate category that workers are in. So what happened? All right, all of us veterans refuse to talk about unborn children. And again, I'm part of this group. What do you do if you work in a biotech lab? You're working with radiation, and you miscarry? Because because of something worse, really, what do you get for death? Because to get workers compensation, you have to have lost workdays and they have a loss. There's a lot of miscarriage. And the rest of the of the payments on workers comp are scheduled, you get 52 weeks for an hour, 26 weeks for rest. That's how it works. Yeah, here's the kind of list for all right, what happens if your child is born is born with birth defects? Then what do you do? Do you sue? You can't sue but your child because your child is not an employee. However, and this is where the the sort of sticky point of the argument comes in a legal argument used to if your child sues as a result of exposures received when it was a fetus? What is that doing? Is that saying that a fetus is a person and does that screw us in our in our abortion rights debate? At first glance, I also said yes, if it was it really thorny question for me, it's really very informed by a closer issue. I think, number one, we have to redefine it. And number two, that's not the case. And this is this is where I do commend the ACLU and your allies on this form. De Esser Grievers DPS, to drugs given to many women in the 60s to avoid miscarriages, given the offspring, my sister's one of them the offspring of women who use DEET Yes, are now higher rate at higher risk for getting certain forms of cancer, cervical cancer to be specific, to start our suit, they sued and they got money. It's never been used to get the new abortion rights today that I know of. I don't believe it has. That was based on on a field exposure. And nobody was up in arms about that. There are medical malpractice cases all the time against OB GYN is a scenario where you'll hear about why why Doctor grades and stuff, I do have different different ideas on that. OB GYN czar sued all the time because of procedures they should have done didn't do did wrong. Again, while the fetus was in utero, it's never been used against us. So tort rights have long been established for fetuses without it being used against us as people who are pro choice in terms of reproductive health. There are those, again, the ACLU leaving this fight. And I have to say I really respect most of the work that the ACLU does, I'm very troubled by the fact that we take this very different view of this particular issue. They are afraid that if we create a special that if we allow the offspring to sue for for damage that her uterus will set a very bad precedent. I have problems with it, because I see this as once again, a reinforcement of workers being a different class citizen, that if you are a middle class woman whose her feet whose mother two feet, yes, you've sued, and you're okay, dead, if you were damaged because of something there'll be she wants to mother's, you know, OBGYN did while you were in utero, you're suing in your okay. And that's where the debate is right now is that we have to certainly preserve our rights to choose. And I think, number one, this is perhaps a perfect opportunity to try to take back that the framing of debate and talking about rights issues as being right to choose for people of all classes, and for people who want every different option of reproductive health. Unknown Speaker 44:33 And if we're going to attack tort rights of fetuses, because of the possibility that it could be used against us, and I'm aware that it could, then we have to protect us tort rights all across the board and not single out workers from one place where people cannot use this option. Having said that, I I think that that's something that that people here really need to think about. I think we'll see more of this debate in the future. Especially because you have to controls was settled favorably to us if it were if we lost, this would be such an issue because they'd be excluding women. Now, there would be excluding women from some jobs. One of the worst jobs in terms of reproductive risks is hospital work. Women are not going to get excluded, take my word for it. They'll be around in hospital where for a good long time. Labor has taken this opportunity, among many other opportunities, if you want to call it that, for rethinking where we're going applicational safety policy This has the advantage of doing it the least this way has these headlines, I wanted to read completely one breakdown, I'm going to Unknown Speaker 45:41 pass them around so we can start throwing it open. Unknown Speaker 45:46 This is this is probably the first time I'd really love a New York Times headline, but I loved it because they really got this case in their headline a really got for what it was first page cortex right of women to jobs with health risks. That's exactly what they did not give women the right to clean jobs. They gave them the right court best backs women's rights for risky jobs. Absolutely true. I couldn't have said it better. And then just worse. News with equal rights people risks. Yeah, same thing. So I'll just pass it around with your teacher, just some articles that came out after Johnson Controls, labor. Labor, labor has come out with an agenda for reforming OSHA, because again, it's clearly inadequate. There are a number of different aspects to this program. One is coverage for all workers. There are a lot of workers right now who don't even have the right to this relatively inadequate coverage. Some of the most dangerous jobs are not covered by this agricultural workers being on transportation, public employees are not covered by this public employees. That includes not just the office workers who have their own risk. But all the roads crews that know the parks people, all these people have a lot of exposures and are covered. We're calling for improving the standard setting process right now it takes years to get a standard through somebody number one to speed up the process. And number two, to really give labor an opportunity to make these health based standards reading and I think that this is absolutely not a technical question. It's a power struggle not politically based, and it really does for a long time. But we need to begin to get to raise pepper enforcement, OSHA until a few months ago, he averaged OSHA fine, average OSHA fine with less than a New York City parking ticket with less than $50. OSHA recently this year put in a provision to multiply all of their standard fines by seven times. And they absolutely said it was a revenue generating idea. Now, I wonder why they did that. I'm glad they raised the money. But it was a revenue generating idea. The average fatality when the employer gets cited is under $200. So maybe they'll go up to $1,400. Right. Like I said, it will be lucky, but it's really not adequate. So we need better enforcement, we need stricter enforcement, better reporting, it's very difficult for us to set priorities or to make a lot of arguments into reporting is improved. In a couple of other aspects to it, but the one that I consider most important is something that's called the right to app. If you're in the workplace, after many years of struggle, we now have a right to know what you're working with. And that took a lot of struggle. We finally got that a few years ago, before that we didn't even have a right to know the chemicals or you can be working with something that was going to be passed out request to know what it was. They wouldn't tell you. They had no legal obligation to tell you. So what do you do now? Now you have the right to know what you're working with. And you have all this information on how horrible this stuff is. You don't have a right to do anything about it, you do not have a right to refuse, except in cases of imminent danger, which is very narrowly defined, and generally a safety related rather than health related so that for instance developed the asbestos work being done in this country, there's only one time that OSHA has has given this bestest imminent being designation even though we know it causes cancer. Imminent danger usually means like you're on a scaffold that has three legs instead of four or something that is very severe. Unknown Speaker 49:25 So what we're looking for, and I I was talking to some film last week, I think we need to be very cautious about it. Our honest read it from the fact sheet that the AFL CIO put out right to act require employers to have a worksite safety and health program and a safety and health committee with full union and worker participation. The safety committee should have the right to meet conduct inspections, investigate accidents and gain access to safety and health information. Committee members and workers must be educated and trained about job hazards. Workers who take action on jobs must be protected against protect oleation thinks the student a guaranteed the right to refuse dangerous work which threatens their lives. I think the last part is probably the strongest thing in here that if individual work with begin have a right to refuse, we'll begin to see some changes. And if the committee's have a right to shut down certain operations that they know are dangerous that will also help us. Our Canadian brothers or sisters who are few years ahead of us in terms of labor management relations have had this for a while. And it's very interesting, because they're coming up with some problems with this model. And I can look at closely, maybe one being that workers need more, if you're going to be a safety net worker safety inspector, we need more time, we have time to do the inspections, time for training and the training that is separate from management's training. So you can discuss strategies as well as the technical aspects, and that's where they're running into trouble. But if you think that it's worth having discussions about this year, what I would add, in addition to the workers that I talked about earlier, Unknown Speaker 50:59 since we're passing things, I just want to show you one of my favorite pictures, I was looking through industrial hygiene, literature and thinking, how could I tell people who probably haven't been to a steel mill, what kind of problems we're talking about when we talk about it being equally risky, but not necessarily equally healthy or equally safe. And I've found to my, I can't call it pleasure. Whatever I found to meet my needs a photograph of the test respirator, the caption says, a respirator must fit perfectly. And you'll see this blonde gentleman who was wearing a respirator and a protective suit and has some burning fume of something under his respirator nose to make sure that he's safe, that it's a proper fit. And standing next to him is a female person, likely and Industrial Hygienist wearing a suit and a smile, but no protective equipment whatsoever. And this to me, it seemed to capture the essence of the problem with the Johnson Controls case. And to capture exactly what we need to be thinking about is how to have some feminist approach to the situation. Now that we know as we always knew that we'll get in there. So let's add this to the pile of things they have to look at. And let's get some comments to Marsha. Oh, okay. Okay. Unknown Speaker 52:27 I just thought so besides sort of allowing for until a few years ago, when you do respirator fit tests, the main thing is to make sure that seals well. So they try to do this is irritant smoke that they're using, if they put the respirator on, they pump the spiritual smoke and if you feel it, you know, if you cough and you don't have a good seal, but they used to use for something sort of like smelled like bananas restaurant loyals that really smelled strongly bananas. They don't use that much anymore for two reasons. Number one, some people don't have a strong senses of smell or taste if you have a cold as for number two, discovered that it's a suspect carcinogen. Unknown Speaker 53:09 What would be really dangerous for that lady, then? That's my point. So Unknown Speaker 53:17 one way our protocol shut up and open it up. Again, just in terms of the extension from three to five minutes or as long the aspects of legal rights last thing that we need to look at legal rights criminal prosecution, what would happen if we were here for work as a secretary? What would happen get a copy for your boss? Well, for those who are traditional secretaries, picture it if you had to get coffee for your boss every day, you really hated the guy, right? And so you wanted to get a have a if you slip the cute pickups of arsenic in every day. Here Yeah, besides the pleasure, this thing to say this arsenic in small quantities isn't going to do it to you right away, it will make you feel bad, it will make you feel sick, and eventually it will cause you a lot of harm, but a few drops, you're not going to notice. So imagine if every day you put a few drops of arsenic into your boss's pocket and then eventually got sick maybe the what was happening immediately kind of got to take or you would have trouble you would be trying to criminalize. That doesn't happen with employers because what they're doing is the equivalent of sticking a few drops of arsenic in your coffee every day. Doesn't work the same way. There are exceptions and that's beginning to change. Now I want to do a plug for demonstration of April 25. Thursday, the first time in history in this country because kids called him thermometer which is a thermometer factory Brooklyn where they repaired for me thermometers. These guys immigrant workers were working in this window was unventilated room and if makes me taking broken thermometers and sort of sorting out the glass in the mercury. Mercury is very dangerous stuff. Because guys separate permanent central nervous system damage, these guys are crippled for life. Finally, for the first time da in Brooklyn was ultimately defined prosecuted on an assault charge, prosecuted the employer assault with a toxic weapon or a deadly weapon. These guys were convicted and their sentencing is happening at Brooklyn Supreme Court on Thursday, April 25. And we can be demonstration at the court at 12 o'clock from 12 until two and then encourage everybody to go there. So that we can always try again, I think at that point, you're putting pressure on the judge, but listening public, the fact that these assaults happen every day, was that time some of these guys don't. Know, legally? Unknown Speaker 56:01 Do you have any comments? Unknown Speaker 56:08 I mean, I think all of this is important. One aspect, since we're looking at all the things that we want to be careful about in terms of pro choice rhetoric that I wanted to bring up, and I think is important to this discussion in particular, is that very often another group of people that we lose our disability rights people. And so be very careful around some of these arguments that it doesn't end up sounding like the worst thing in the world is to have a birth defect. I think this has happened a lot. And it's an argument I have with pro choice people all the time that you can maintain a right to abortion based on the fact that you could have a baby with a disability. And I think that, you know, I think in terms of disability rights, that seems to be the thing that just, you know, I think it's very important in terms of hazards. You know, this is an obvious thing that we're going to talk about around women is oh, God, what, what about danger? Unknown Speaker 57:05 Well, I think that that's right, because the problem with fetal protection policies, aside from that they were, as Johnson did them overbroad, and there were some very narrow ones. Sandy was very narrow, get sterilized, or don't show up, it was very narrow. Okay. And it was specific jobs. And that was it, you didn't have this rhetoric of 20 million women being employed. They never alluded to the women that worked in the Bdts and had clusters of miscarriages. Okay, so if you look at the early cases that set the tone and weren't overturn, it was narrow. And when you look at it, that narrow plane, the the one thing that does do this remotely decent is it sort of crystallizes issues. And it says, Who are these guys with, they think that they can tell you which babies are going to be safe and clean and happy and normal, as if it was in their hands to make those decisions. And as if choice was somehow wrapped up with the ultimate health of that baby. And we somehow still, the women that in the civil liberties area in particular, they got caught up in this somehow forgot they heard right to choose and went crazy, they lost the whole overshadowing economic context of what decisions are made in that workplace. And they lost the notion of whether babies are going to be healthy or not, and what other things go on. And they focused on this, this very narrow reading of Title Seven, and said, This is discrimination because it has to do with what we decide about pregnancy and about sex. And there was some merit to it, I should point out that in the road to act area, I had spoken because in filing the brief, it's kind of a funny thing. The Industrial Hygiene Law Project spring, was basically taking the position that neither approach was right, the Title Seven doesn't answer these questions, and you need to do good risk assessment. And then on rare occasions, good risk assessment will keep some people out sometimes temporarily. And there will be things you will be doing to make the workplace better all the time. But nonetheless, there are some things you just don't want acute exposures for whatever reason, okay. And what we were urging was, because of this, this analysis isn't going to help you're either going to let in a lot of people and somebody is going to have this dangerous exposure, or you're going to keep out a lot of people who wouldn't necessarily need it. Okay. The court wasn't thrilled with it, though, you can argue that our view helped them decide to throw out some very bad criteria that were floating in the case law and made no sense. And the thing of this is that somewhere along the line, there's this this notion that you've got to really grapple with potential harms and aches and concerns that go beyond just one individual's choice about whether or not to have children at a particular time. There are some real harms out there. And the society seems to be unwilling to grapple with this issue, that some work could make you very sick, or that it could make you so sick, that that your children will get sick in ways you didn't even notice. It just seemed completely unwilling to deal with that. And I remember because we can't, we had to file, we had to get letters of consent from both parties. And what that means is, it's a sort of formal thing, but the long and short of it is you get to explain your position to each side. And they say whether or not you should be part of the case as a friend of the court informing the court. And of course, in case they say, No, there's a separate motion, you can file that you then put this motion this piece of white paper on top, it's like a red flag court. These guys didn't want to hear what I had to say. And I want to tell you, and then the court, if I were clerk would say, Hey, what's this about? Okay, so each side, we had to tell them why we went both sides didn't want us to fire, which I thought was an interesting thing. Okay. For the defendants, it was very clear why Johnson Controls didn't want and this was very startling thing. They had the Chamber of Commerce coming in arguing that Title Seven never meant to cover women, because they were just thrown into legislative history at the last minute. So clearly, the BFO Q wasn't good lOn. They're lovely theories. Okay, they had the right to life, people coming in saying no fetuses had tort liability protection since the common law of 1506. And clearly this is. So that was startling to them. But when I spoke to Marsha Berzon, who represented the women who brought the case, and she said, you know, it sounds like you're saying things that we'd like, but I don't understand why you think risk assessment, not Title Seven is the way to go. She said, What would you do? She said, If a client walked into your office and said, I've been fired, because I can't be exposed to this reproductive health hazard, because I'm a woman. She said, Doesn't that sound like Title Seven? How would you get her money? And I said, Well, I'd have to call up OSHA and start seeing if there was a writ of mandamus, if there was some complaint process, if there was something with the fact that Title Seven is going to get her money isn't going to get that a clean workplace. Unknown Speaker 1:02:35 Okay, so what happened was basically, they bought into that fight that I referred to before that sort of double or nothing wrong, then if they could get into the Title Seven box, either employers were gonna get money, they were gonna get the right not to clean the workplace and save the cost of compliance with OSH act. Or if they lost plaintiffs would get money, because they weren't going to be you know, they get the Title Seven seniority rights and pay and such. And OSHA could sit there very quietly, because it's a rather weak agency and be very pleased to watch other people fight. But this is something we have to grapple with that nobody guarantees you're gonna get safe and healthy children that are going to be wonderful, even in the best possible circumstances. And nobody guarantees that there won't be some home somewhere down the road. So we have to start thinking about the fact that there are these hazards in the workplace, and that there must be some feminist way of attacking them. That gets away from the the freedom to choose about abortion issue, which doesn't help you in this context. It doesn't really, and that's a problem. I don't know how we do that. Actually. I don't know if Johnson Controls is strong enough lesson for people. What do you think? Unknown Speaker 1:03:55 Other people thinking? Are you questioning how to get the pro choice movement to also give attention to this issue of hanging out? Okay, because there's so narrow in that's a good question. But I think a lot of the answer. It comes from the whole class thing founders movement, wait, no class movement, and the issues that they target are coming from a plane that men and women are not on? And, you know, these women would never think about working fat. They don't think women work. They don't think women only professional. They don't think women worked in 1950. You know, right. They don't think factories I think. Unknown Speaker 1:04:52 Well, I think that you're right in the point that I had the impression that a lot of the women working on this case, didn't really have Understand how really dirty some workplace exposures are one of the industrial hygienists that was instrumental in this, in my contribution to this situation worked in in at the time us ex and I can say that now, but at the time her employer for bitter from exposing her, she was working in New writings. And since she's no longer there, I can say that. But the point was, she was working with women who work in what they call the pickle. And, and the pickling is very interesting part of the steel process. As far as finishing you familiar with this? You describe it, you probably know. Well, this is my very good friend who works there and is responsible for the exposure monitoring, and had been asked about what do you know, maybe we ought to look at one of these policies. And they were very proud. We said they were very farsighted, not to. Okay, but so in pickling, the finished steel was coming through. And as I understand it, first it goes into some very abrasive solvents. And they clean off any possible contaminants that could be on steel, and then income several coatings. And there are lots of chemicals in that that are really dangerous stuff. We're in acute exposure, even if it wasn't necessarily a Fito toxin in the way that this reproductive toxicology has talked about it. And acute exposure could certainly disable a mother long enough to have a very bad effect. And some of the, there was a woman working there who wanted to be at least out of that workplace during her pregnancy. Our reaction was my God, how could you even bear the smell? For instance, there's all this large that they use with the solvents. And and during pregnancy, you're very sensitive to any kind of like meat smell and poultry, smells and stuff? How could you even stand there without passing out or being really incredibly nauseous? You know, and it was clear that a lot of women that worked on this case, don't have that realm have a frame of reference in their consciousness, and don't somewhere believe that that's really an experience that has to be thought about and worried about. And I don't know how we get past that. Unknown Speaker 1:07:17 But with the pro choice would, but they wouldn't be against this. They just don't recognize it. They wouldn't be. They wouldn't be against such a settlement, saying no. No, I'm saying that about one veterans, saying that women have the right to work in a hazardous, hazardous. Unknown Speaker 1:07:42 I mean, they would be against a policy that would keep the woman out of that workplace, even unless there were some protections that were never clearly articulated in terms of her pain or employment. Okay. And that's, that's the part I speak with one voice. Unknown Speaker 1:08:01 People, there are some in that coalition who oppose even a voluntary transfer policy. And I want to say a few things about this. Number one, every single known reproductive hazard has other health effects as well. But there's nothing that we know that affects only the fetus, they all affect us as adults, men and women. Number two, we're gonna want one to pre production, many of the things including lead, Johnson Controls affect men's reproductive capacity as well as women's I don't think I think that it was class issue, and like many of them don't understand that they have a different understanding that I do have what it means to have a right to choose where to work. For somebody with fewer options, the choice of where to work is one of your choice. Economically, it's not a choice. Do you want health insurance? It's not a choice. If you live in the belt where Americans have no belly or American Cyanamid was when women chose to get sterilized was your choice at the time of American Cyanamid. That was the county in a country with the highest unemployment rate? Absolutely not a choice that they had. And I think that that is a class issue. And people don't understand this question of choice. The way that I see it. Your art, I mean, one thing that, you know, because we grapple with this all the time I I've been doing this work for about six years, and my counterpart in Boston has been doing it for about 12 minutes. I really, really like. And it's amazing. How many paths if you've gotten in the past 12 years from women who said, My employer has has an exclusionary policy. And she said to in my six years, I've gotten to how many calls have you gotten from women who said I'm pregnant and considering becoming a quick pregnant and Newpoint Get the hell out of this job. And it's countless and I get cameras every week as well. So in fact, the issue that they're focusing on What is this discrimination issue, which is crucial. I mean, as a woman, I consider it crucial. But in terms of the reality of where people's concerns are, I think it's a little out of touch. And I think that that's part of the class. So there are some in this group, one of the things that we try to do when I get calls from women workers, thank you all the time is, if they're in a unionized atmosphere, which is we're going to be their only option is we try to get voluntary transfers, so that they can for the duration of their pregnancy, have a different job get less exposed, that sort of thing. Not all of them, but some of them in that, in that other camp. Some other camps, oppose voluntary transfers, because they do not want any separate standards for when we're going to separate standards for pregnant women, I think it just doesn't reflect the reality of working class when we can sorry. The other thing about transfers however, during pregnancy, is to give you a guide for subtopic law, now I'm going to talk medicine, okay. Unknown Speaker 1:11:05 The time in the development of a fetus, the timeline, when it's most vulnerable, is the first six weeks, which is when the organs are developing. That's when the liver, the kidneys, the brain, the heart, that's when all these things are developing. So some exposures that are happening during that time, can really cause the most severe damage. So how many women other pregnant from day one now? And even if you sometimes know you are, you're gonna go in and tell your boss, I get sick last night? That's it, I'm off to stop. Right. So in terms of having transfers only through period of pregnancy, problematic medically? Unknown Speaker 1:11:44 Well, it's problematic legally until we change the NRC regulations talk about declared pregnancy. And what happens with a declared pregnancy. This hasn't been challenged by ACLU do I have to admit, they wrote a brief in haste versus Sheldon Memorial Hospital where the port uses standards. And they said, Oh, but this is no good. We don't like this. But nobody has really said what happens with declared pregnancy. Other than that the woman's exposure to the radiation has to go down dramatically to what it would be in the general population outside. In other words of radiation exposure can't be the same as other workers in the workplace. Now, Unknown Speaker 1:12:28 check about getting what she just said, back to my original thing, radiation that the general public is allowed to be exposed to regular patients or foreign workers are far more stringent than what workers are allowed to be exposed to. It's not I can work with like different bodies. It's like the laws. So yeah. Other reinforcement of that theory? Well, the thing is, that Unknown Speaker 1:12:48 whatever it is, all that happens with declared pregnancy, is then they both have to make sure she's exposed to less. And there is no economic incentives that I can read in there for actually declaring one's pregnancy. And I agree with you that that is so dangerous, because of the radiation in particular sort of famous for this. I think that would be like saying asbestos in lungs. But in fact, there's no protection for that one to assure it's clear, she could have her job back at some point. It's not clear what she would be doing interim. What incentive there is other than some sort of negative punishment that maybe there should be some sanctions, but it's not clear what statute would apply. If the employer doesn't grant her this shifting around, but nothing that sort of says, Well, if you come forward, we'll give you time off from the prenatal care. And we'll pay for your time. So that way, you could do it over there isn't any positive gain that you could point to? And it comes from an unwillingness to really deal with with how deadly that stuff community? As far as I can tell, I can't think really, I think it's much easier to say, well, it's not really as bad. We had some studies we looked at, the famous one that we'll get is Hiroshima, Nagasaki survivors, and they don't find nearly as many defenses. And they can explain why they just don't find it to be nearly as bad as it was projected. And that's the kind of science they go on. Unknown Speaker 1:14:33 It it's really disturbing to me. I mean, again, it goes back to what release was saying, which is that we'll ever speak with one voice. But there are issues on which we should be more united than we are. And I think that this is clearly one of them. It's one of the reasons I was so distraught about the ACLU, its position on this, and again, except a few. So you probably are going to be on this webinar others involved as well, because it seems to me that this is an area where we were working together creatively trying to think of some solutions for you Much better than to declare ourselves what's the SVM? The ACLU, the women's rights? So what if please tell me on the Unknown Speaker 1:15:15 side still don't get wildly against one or the other that's moving when Unknown Speaker 1:15:20 there you can see exclusion Unknown Speaker 1:15:22 there against. They had a victory they considered when when Johnson Controls command, all these headlines came out, they said they put out a press release saying this is a total victory. I put out a press release from my organization saying this is not a total victory. There's just as much lead in more places than there was yesterday. They called us up very painful stop saying, Why are you saying this isn't a victory. And that was where I think the classes she's coming from are defending safety and health, and they're defending a narrow definition of women's rights. Unknown Speaker 1:15:52 It was billed as the largest sex discrimination case, you know, thus far, in Title Seven circles, this was viewed as a wonderful artful decision, because and that was part of what I did what I deliberately omitted for time purposes. In Title Seven, the trend has been to expanding the exceptions and making them much bigger all along. There was a case two years ago, that said that if sex discrimination was one of several characteristics that you looked at, and there was something discriminatory about that characteristic, but you would reach the same decision. Anyway, that's not discrimination, because you wouldn't rationally business related reach that same decision. So that same person would have been without a job and the discrimination is irrelevant. And that's the kind of really conservative trend that's come towards what Title Seven is about. So just a week ago, people that worked on on Johnson Controls worth law school talking about what a major victory has been, how Title Seven has now resorted? Oh, yes, you would have loved it. You should you should get the tape from that and hear what they had to say. There. They were putting me up this as being the big opposition, because I kept saying no, it's not that great. So but for Title Seven purposes, it really, it does reaffirm that these exemptions do not exist as broadly as the court had construed in the past. And there's an excellent political argument to be made with this Court had to throw something because of the way you've been acting, because because the Title Seven is, in fact in front of Congress now and being reauthorized and being rewritten. And there's a lot of debate about the versions that are up. And there were lots of other things that went on. In that sense, there's an argument to be made those things play a role. It's never just a monolith. There's always lots of baskets. And I think that's what happened here. I think that we allowed it to become a monolith. And somehow we have to know better than that next time. I think that's the lesson. So maybe we should go off to eat or I think we should give people a break have any final comments? Unknown Speaker 1:18:20 Oh, I do have one more question. Sure. It's the agricultural workers and public workers that are covered by the right to know by OSHA by OSHA, also, Unknown Speaker 1:18:29 each state has public employee coverage. It's different. And in New York, in fact, we have to have you on the city level because the state constitution imitates the US Constitution. So you can't go from the state. Obviously, the city workers are covered by Pash, right. But it's a special law. It's not state law. You Unknown Speaker 1:18:52 realize that because Unknown Speaker 1:18:55 I'm just looking here, extend the act to fully cover the millions of state and local public and science transportation workers who have their own railway. Workers in do we nuclear workers? Unknown Speaker 1:19:06 Isn't that just state, Unknown Speaker 1:19:09 national thing public employees, it can be harder, there's a constitutional problem with public employees. Because the states have the right to regulate themselves, because they know in Unknown Speaker 1:19:19 California, the agriculture and agricultural pesticides such a huge issue and the huge problem that they don't they don't have a responsibility to put signs up and stuff and when this this was a, you know, a huge problem. When people raised this issue. They said it cost too much money, but wouldn't that fall under right to know? Yes, Unknown Speaker 1:19:42 it would. Well, you would have was there was a funny thing with Cal OSHA, Cal OSHA went out of business for a while because it was perceived as too expensive. Unknown Speaker 1:19:51 They were in a state plan. They weren't most of us like in New York private sector workers now public sector workers are covered by OSHA. Several states have their own plan. Because I said we'd rather do it locally, you can do it ourselves in California. Unknown Speaker 1:20:04 That's right. And then now they're back in business and Unknown Speaker 1:20:07 believes to be great, and how to change the governor. Put them out of business. Back in the struggle for the surface again. But yeah, it's been probably, even if the right to now is much less. So they don't have any coverage at all. But California, I believe they do now because they were able to struggle for it. Oh, okay. Unknown Speaker 1:20:35 So let me know, in New York, area, auto workers do have the right to know but don't have OSHA. Unknown Speaker 1:20:42 What what happened is in the late 70s, early 80s, there was an attempt to get agricultural workers in under OSHA standards affecting pesticides. And EPA said, no, no, no, we regulate pesticide. And there's a whole line of cases very messy business. But the result was that OSHA decided to stay out of agriculture. And, I mean, all of these things, the exclusions to OSHA are crazy and you could write volumes about the other laws you have to take into account if you were going to cover everybody. It is amazing how little OSHA coverage there really is. Unknown Speaker 1:21:25 It's really hard on the shop floor level for workers who are trying to get a clean place to piece all these laws together and it's a very difficult struggle let me say something a little more cheerful. Unknown Speaker 1:21:49 Oh okay.