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Show IX. LABOR THE PROBLEM Many workers have been excluded from the federal statutory tection enjoyed by the majority of the labor force. • Before recent amendments, 45 million workers the Fair Labor Standards Act. were pro covered by But 16 million workers were not covered, including two million domestic workers, three million state and local government employees, four million employees of small retail firms, and 2.5 million in general services.' • Almost three million agricultural workers in the United States excluded from coverage of the statute which guarantees workers the right to organize and bargain collectively, the National Manage are ment Relations Act.2 • At least two million workers employed in non-profit hospitals Management Relations also excluded from coverage of the Labor Act.3. are One of the statutes, the Occupational Health and Safety Act come too late for millions of dead and injured victims of industrial accidents and industrial illness. passed in 1970, has Ralph Nader Task Force headed by Georgetown Law Pro Joseph A. Page and Mary-Win O'Brien completed an exhaus tive study of occupational health and safety in early 1972 • A fessor . According to that study, accurate statistics concerning job ill and accidents do not exist. But the Public Health Service uses figure of 336,000 job illnesses a year. This figure' is derived by .• ness a making a national projection of the 1965 figures from California, the only state in the union with an adequate system of recording occu pational diseases.' Thus, the many occupational diseases not found in California, such as miners' black lung disease, would not be re flected in these figures. • The Nader more Study notes that on several other occasions, far shocking figures have been released. For instance, in 1968 a 1 |
