Alta Journal is pleased to present the fourth installment of a six-part series by writer Diane Factor. Each week, we’ll publish online the next portion of “Fighting for Safe Jobs.” Visit altaonline.com/serials to keep reading, and sign up here to be notified by email when each new installment is available.
When most people think of Los Angeles, they imagine it as a city largely devoted to entertainment. But Los Angeles County remains a major manufacturing hub and is home to the largest port in the United States. After World War II, heavy industries grew phenomenally—as did the risks to workers. By 1970, a campaign to protect workers on the job, in lockstep with the civil rights and environmental movements, had led to the passage of landmark federal laws including the Occupational Safety and Health Act. In 1973, California created the Division of Occupational Safety and Health—Cal/OSHA—a once robust and nationally recognized agency dedicated to protecting workers.
For this Alta Serial, Factor looks back at her time as a Cal/OSHA inspector in the 1980s. A native Angelena, Factor was introduced through this job to the people who risked their lives to keep Los Angeles running, union organizers who sought better deals for workers, and the managers and owners of industrial operations who just wanted to keep the machines moving and the profits rolling in.
In part three, Factor explained how she went from a horseback-riding midcentury L.A. kid to a school bus driver and union advocate. Along the way, she saw the backlash against school integration in Pasadena, an experience that pushed her to further advocate for social justice.
By 1979, school busing to desegregate Los Angeles schools was over, undermined by ballot initiative, political maneuvering, and changing student demographics. The need for drivers sharply declined.
I decided to continue my education by taking the science courses I needed to qualify for the Environmental and Occupational Health program at Cal State Northridge. A master of science degree would allow me to become a Cal/OSHA industrial hygienist.
I was on a new mission.
I was accepted into the master’s program in 1980 and was introduced to a small group of health and safety activists forming the L.A. Committee on Occupational Safety and Health. COSH groups were established in over a dozen locations across the country. The COSHistas, as members were called, were either union activists, educators, medical professionals, or researchers.
LACOSH was involved in several campaigns. The 1981 Mediterranean fruit fly infestation was the most memorable. Fruit flies harm citrus trees and threaten valuable export crops. Aerial spraying with malathion, a sticky insecticide that coated cars, toys, anything left outside, was deemed a remedy, igniting an uproar.
Government and public health leaders pronounced malathion safe for short-term human exposure, but the public and the press were not convinced, worried about the long-term health effects of chemicals raining down across the state. The debate as to whether exposure could cause cancer or other serious latent health problems was all over the front pages of the newspapers.
Citrus growers were now required to fumigate all crops for export. They applied ethylene dibromide (EDB) after the crates of oranges and lemons were stacked in shipping containers, decontaminating as the fruit traveled from the Central Valley to the L.A. Harbor. EDB is a close molecular cousin to the chemical dibromochloropropane (DBCP), an infamous fumigant that had sterilized male workers at the Occidental Chemical Company production plant in Lathrop, California, just a few years earlier. Even though company medical professionals were aware that DBCP could cause reduced sperm count, they had not warned the workforce. Only after the wives of workers noticed difficulties getting pregnant did the men get tested.
This scandal resulted in the banning of DBCP and the formation of California’s Hazard Evaluation System and Information Service. So began the right to know campaign: a way to share information and alert the public about potential toxic substances.
With DBCP banned in the United States (and exported to Latin America), HESIS researchers were tracking EDB, the substitute being used on the citrus crop. They issued a hazard alert after an Israeli report showed that bulls had become sterile after consuming EDB. I read the HESIS alert and feared that the stevedores in the harbor were at risk.
In September, two HESIS specialists from UC Berkeley flew to L.A., and we went to visit Louis Rios, the president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 13 representing dockworkers. Rios, a doppelgänger for Humphrey Bogart, was an elegant man, well-spoken and thoughtful. He understood his members and their fight for good stevedore jobs.
Together we crafted a strategy to do something swift and effective to eliminate potential exposure to EDB. The highest risk was to workers who initially entered the sealed shipping containers, where vapor had accumulated during the journey from the orchards in the Central Valley to the port. As the workers opened the containers to unload the crates by hand, they inhaled the EDB vapor. Rios was worried about the risks but also aware that his membership would not want to admit to being afraid of an invisible, odorless gas while unloading crates of oranges. We prepared an article detailing the risks for the LACOSH newsletter, which Rios distributed. Rios called a union meeting. I attended, and the Berkeley scientists presented slides and offered a description of testicular atrophy; it was clear what was at stake. Rios called for a quick strike to refuse to unload the fruit.
My role was to notify Cal/OSHA about the potential hazard and the job action. The union would notify the press. In the morning, when the containers loaded with contaminated fruit arrived at the dock, the stevedores refused to enter and unload the crates, citing the right to refuse unsafe work. An emergency inspection was initiated. Cal/OSHA inspectors showed up fully outfitted in hazmat suits and respirators and entered the containers to monitor the levels of airborne EDB vapor.
Reporters from local newspapers and television were on hand to document the inspectors examining table-ready oranges and lemons for EDB. The footage was released immediately and appeared on the evening news. The story included images of empty supermarkets where shoppers were wary of EDB-treated oranges and lemons. Citrus disappeared from grocery stores almost overnight.
A strong Cal/OSHA (but not federal OSHA) immediately set an emergency worker-exposure standard in November 1981. Local truckers and dockworkers refused to handle fumigated citrus. Cal/OSHA recommended that if fruit must be treated at the behest of the purchasers, then the roof hatches on containers should be left open, allowing the vapor to dissipate on the journey from farm to port. Stevedores would only enter containers that had been monitored to confirm the absence of EDB vapor. The federal Environmental Protection Agency finally banned EDB in 1984 after a battle with the growers’ associations.
In June 1982, I was 30 years old, and on graduation day I interviewed for an associate industrial hygiene compliance officer position with Cal/OSHA, determined to be the kind of inspector who protected workers. This would be the culmination of my early campaigns: the effort to unionize school bus drivers; the drive to protect stevedores from EDB poisoning.
I was hired three months later and assigned to the Long Beach office. I quickly realized that my master of science degree would not prepare me for the challenges of the work. Walking into a factory felt like entering foreign territory. I was completely lost and had to bluff my way through my early inspections. Sometimes, I just couldn’t understand what I was observing.
The first year on the job was my period of apprenticeship. I learned under the tutelage of older safety engineers and a wise manager, Tom Butler. Butler was a big Irishman who greeted me daily with a “top o’ the morning” nod. I knew he wanted to foster my fervor, but more importantly, I also knew he always had my back. It was only after a series of inspections where I got myself into hot water and he bailed me out that I began to truly learn the profession.
What I lacked in experience, though, I more than made up for in determination.
Typically, investigations were instigated by workers to achieve their goals. When I commenced my opening walk-through, I listened to management and the workers. I was not the expert here, they were, and I relied on their knowledge. At the Chevron oil refinery and the McDonnell Douglas aircraft plant, there were company safety managers, union safety representatives, a safety committee, and a structure for bringing up and addressing complaints. Todd Shipyard, an important fabricator of warships and the last remaining commercial shipyard in Los Angeles Harbor, was represented by the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, a radical industrial union that complained to Cal/OSHA as part of their strategy when they needed backup.
No one had cell phones in those days, but I was on a first-name basis with the union safety representatives and regularly showed up at the docks. They had their own agenda, and I was part of the plan. Whether changes were made did not depend only on my performance.
At the KM Company, a small, nonunion manufacturer that produced three-ring binders, the workers not only were concerned but openly complained. Several workers had filed a Cal/OSHA complaint because of the high incidence of breast cancer among employees.
I took the initial office call and struggled with my less-than-perfect Spanish to understand the agitated women workers who spoke in a torrent of accusations. They were Cuban, many related to one another or neighbors. They shared birthdays, baby showers, and spiced meat pies. Through this network, the women could list the breast cancer diagnoses of several workers, including a death, and were adamant that something had to be done.
Without a known cause of breast cancer, I was not sure what I could do. I sampled every possible exposure, especially the electromagnetic heat sealers, a source of nonionizing radiation. The workers compiled a list of cases and filed a petition with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which sent a team of doctors and epidemiologists to investigate. Given that breast cancer is more prevalent in women in the same age group as the workers, they suspected this might be a cohort based on gender and age. The effort started a good dialogue between the workers and the employer. The company was sympathetic and wanted to be cautious. They devised a way to guard the heat sealers. As a result of the study, management offered regular breast cancer screenings and generous health benefits and leave. No union, no citations, but a cooperative management pushed by a vociferous and determined group of women.
That was a win. The Hugo Neu-Proler investigation, however, would be different.•
Next week: After the Explosion
Diane Factor is the founding director of the Worker Education and Resource Center (WERC). She retired in 2020 after 21 years of service. WERC is a non-profit labor-management partnership with the Service Employees International Union Local 721. Factor was a consultant for the County of Los Angeles from 1999 to 2004 and a program manager at the University of California, Los Angeles Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program from 1991 to 1999. Factor was an industrial hygienist at AFL-CIO from 1987 to 1991 and an industrial hygiene compliance officer at the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health from 1982 to 1987.
