That's a big IF. Unions were invented after the onset of the industrial revolution to combat truly unsafe work conditions in industrial settings where worker's dying was common.
OSHA did away with all that.
The current generation of "bad work condition" complaints is around getting adequate bathroom breaks.
The reality is that it’s a toothless tiger by design. Many states do their own enforcement, and don’t exactly prioritize it — IIRC, North Carolina has 20% of the inspectors that it says it needs.
I’m sure your cushy IT gig requires you to stand for 6 hours without taking a piss. Try it sometime before attacking others.
Suppose you're a manager/foreman. You never outright tell your staff to ignore safety regulations; you simply give them a huge workload with a deadline and set of equipment that make it impossible to feasibly accomplish the workload within compliance. Your workers catch on that in order to get the job done, they need to ignore the safety regs. As a manager, you look the other way as they ignore the rules. If an injury happens on the job, you then blame the worker for ignoring the safety regulations, which of course you instructed them to follow. Follow up by giving them a drug test so you might even be able to get out of paying them workers comp.
This is how it works in the real world. Source: seen it, done it.
If you do not push back against management, nothing changes, and unfortunately, to get anything provable in a court of law beyond he said she said... It has to be on paper/in an email.
Go on. Text your boss you can't get the job done on his schedule without violating OSHA standards. Then come back tomorrow and finish it. If they decide to fire you, sue. All the evidence you need will be discoverable.
Don't absorb risk for people not putting their neck on the line.
Wages are and have always been the primary driver of unionising.
The main motivation was never mustache twirling capitalist charicatures shoveling children into furnaces as fuel or some other unambiguous evil that we have since banished. Conditions have always been part of the bargain, but the goal has always been first and foremost higher wages.
https://thediplomat.com/2021/07/factory-fire-reveals-banglad...