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SCCOSH in the Early Years: a founder's recollections by Amanda Hawes

SCCOSH in the Early Years: a founder's recollections by Amanda Hawes. In the mid 70's, a small group met in San Jose, California to discuss chemical-handling aspects of the semiconductor industry and ways to raise our concerns publicly.

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SCCOSH in the Early Years: a founder's recollections by Amanda Hawes

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  1. SCCOSH in the Early Years: a founder's recollections by Amanda Hawes • In the mid 70's, a small group met in San Jose, California to discuss chemical-handling aspects of the semiconductor industry and ways to raise our concerns publicly. • We called ourselves the Electronics Committee for Occupational Safety and Health “ECOSH”. • members included electronics workers, occupational nurses, engineering students, labor, environmental and religious leaders.

  2. SCCOSH in the Early Years: The TCE campaign a • Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health (SCCOSH) was formally organized in 1978. • ECOSH continued as a SCCOSH project into the early 1980s, gaining recognition for a vigorous and largely successful campaign to ban TCE as well as energetic support and advocacy for workers trying to win better conditions

  3. START 0F SVTC • Another early SCCOSH project was Injured Workers United, a support group for workers already affected by chemical exposures, trying to secure fair compensation, decent medical care and retraining. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) also started out as an early project of SCCOSH.

  4. IBM Corporate Mortality File • For 30 years IBM maintained cause of death and work history data on 30,000 workers. Epidemiologist Dr. Richard Clapp found that • Breast cancer deaths were 2.42 times the expected number • Similar findings for brain cancer, kidney cancer, non-Hodgikins lymphoma

  5. The human cost… Silicon Valley Casualties

  6. what OSH justice looks like • Close gap between occupational and environmental PELs for carcinogens and developmental/reproductive toxics • Replace toxics with ‘green chemistry’ • Medical surveillance for exposed workers • Compensation for harm already done • Penal sanctions for chronic wrongdoing

  7. Strategic partners • unions, workers’ rights grps • environmental justice orgs. • Women’s health advocates • Children’s health advocates • health care providers (e.g. ob-gyns, oncologists, pediatricians)

  8. Alliance-building themes • Link occ. disease prevention to debate on provision and cost of health care • Document high societal cost of status quo • Document environmental benefits from better workplace PELs

  9. Realities of advocacy for chemically-injured workers and their children • Time and cost investments • Limited human data • challenges of exposure reconstruction • Limited # of competent experts • vast resources of most defendants

  10. Survival tools • vision and perseverance of a marathoner • Field organizational ability of center midfielder • Sufficient knowledge of history to not repeat it • Low blood pressure • Appropriate sense of humor and of irony • Strong belief in karma

  11. The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right name. • Every person has her own patch of earth to cultivate. What is important is that she dig deep • Si se puede, • y lo mas importante de todo: • El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido.

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