How was living and working conditions in 1880-1910?

Answer 1

In the US the progress of worker safety and reforms of worker conditions on the jobsite have greatly improved since the industrial revolution and today. The 1880's saw the expansion of machine technology for manufacture. Advances in the acquisition of Natural Resources for the making of iron and steel advances the development of machinery for production of everything from bridges to dresses. The rise in production speed and variety created a rise in demand for wage workers which also fed the economy in a circular route wherein paid workers fed the growth of the machine age not only with their labor, but also with the dollars they earned.

Of course wages and working condition improvements were considered costs that the capitalist owner had to avoid or keep as low as possible so as to not have it cut into their cost of production. Therefore, workers generally worked for very low pay and in very unsafe conditions. In addition, it wasn't until later in the second decade of the last century that workers began to understand firstly that a huge gap existed between the earnings of those who owned production and those who toiled to make that production pay out.

Also the accumulation of worker accidents and the brutal results, whether death and dismemberment, brought attention to the need for safer working conditions and the question of who was responsible for providing safe working conditions. In those days it was quite common for the ownership class which owned most newspapers and had a hand in most government affairs, to pass off injuries as due to worker carelessness. While deaths of workers or serious injury could throw a family into starvation from loss of income, the ownership class had the ability to discard injured workers when they no longer served their profit. Also, workers that managed to survive accidents and had at least enough of themselves left to work at something usually had to bear the permanent pain or disability and work for whatever they could manage just to provide themselves room and board.

Almshouses and orphanages often held the dispossessed children and mothers from households broken apart by the poverty caused by the main wage earner's death or disability. Children often had to forgo school to supplement poverty wages in most worker families, in a family that bore a workplace injury that burden fell especially hard.

Social justice organizations cropped up to answer to the poverty caused by worker injury and economic displacement. These organizations would assist workers and their families as an act of charity, but their work was limited by their budgetary constraints and oftentimes limited by the personal prejudices of the "relief" organization. Benevolent organizations also cropped up, you still see some today such as the Elk's Club or the Schriner's. Larger organizations like the Odd Fellows or local Granges for farm workers, were all over the country. In many older cities you will often find a building with the insignia of linking rings and the proclamation "Odd Fellows Hall" underneath. These organizations acted like insurance companies where members dues went into a general fund to cover burial costs and also some relief for the families of workers injured or killed on the job. Unfortunately, they usually followed large manufacturers and relied on the participation of all members. If dues or membership fell short, obviously the compensation pool went lacking.

In the early part of the century workers began to unite together to advocate for all sorts of reforms in the working world that we today take for granted such as the 8 hour day, the 40 hour week, lunch and break periods, time clocks, regular paydays and most importantly, the government regulated fund to cover workers in the case of injury know now as worker's compensation.

Workers compensation was argued among big business owners and the organizations representing workers for over two decades, with mild reforms adopted along the way. But the greatest reform and the beginning of the growth of the working middle class, was when President Franklin Roosevelt passed the Social Security Act of 1935. The act laid down the infrastructure for the development of Social Security and the widow's pension which allowed workers to have a small sum of money to live on after they had spent their bodies in labor. The widow's pension would allow for women to have something to live on should their husband pass away before her, this was important as most women did not work outside of the home and if they did, women's work did not pay enough for even one person to live on.

Within the Social Security Act was passed the Worker's Compensation Law which provides for a fund, regulated by states, which will pay workers a certain (pre determined) amount depending on the type of injury, for injuries proven or that they agree, happened on the jobsite. In order to pass this legislation, worker's groups (labor groups and unions) agreed to waive their right to sue in exchange for the guarantee that workers would receive some compensation for injuries that occur during work. The system is far from perfect. The socialists and communists, who were the driving force behind worker's rights and reforms in the early part of the century wanted more for the workers, but the privileged class had more sympathy and sway with the government and so we have what we have.

Most people fail to understand worker's compensation and how it works and many cases still go unreported and compensation due doesn't get paid out. As stated above, the states regulate worker's comp and are allowed to set their own "ratings" for injuries, thus determining the payouts rates. Pay outs for injuries are usually given as a portion every week or month until the worker improves and can go back to work. To discourage fraud, worker's compensation is only a small portion of the worker's total paycheck and in some states the lag between the injury and time of payout can be so long as to sometimes throw a worker into crisis anyway.

Out of the Social Security Act came the development of the Office of Social Security to administer the programs under it and then it later developed into the Health and Human Services Department and the Social Security Department that we have today. A myriad of programs are run out of these offices which focus on providing for the general welfare of the people, based on the idea that a healthy and safe population has far more value than a starving, injured and sickly one.

Also, in the social movements of the 1960's and 70's, a federal agency was finally developed to oversee worker safety on the job. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was formed. OSHA regulates jobsite safety, makes laws related to jobsite safety and also administers enforcement and punishment of violators. Stripped of a lot of its funding since the 1980's, the OSHA offices have had a very hard time keeping up with worker safety and worker accidents have steadily increased in the last decade of the last century and still are today.

In addition, the Labor Department had been developed as governmental agency that develops and oversees all issues relating to workers, they monitor and regulate compliance with employer laws and worker protections. They also have suffered severe cuts in funding since the 1980's. As a result the time line between reporting a labor problem and resolution is longer and longer resulting in workers not even bothering to report exploitation or abuse, or not getting the redress they deserve.

We've come a long way, but keeping working conditions humane and safe is a continual struggle against the desire of the owners of production to maximize profit and minimize what they consider "loss".