The history of workplace disasters in the United States is often associated with nineteenth-century industrialization in northeastern and midwestern cities. Yet James P. Kraft provides an engaging reminder that workplace disasters are by no means a relic of a bygone era. Rather, technological innovations that gave rise to a postindustrial society created new workplace hazards that demanded new safety reforms.
After providing a brief survey of workplace disasters throughout U.S. history, Kraft offers in-depth accounts of five workplace disasters in the post–World War II western Sun Belt: a 1947 chemical plant explosion, a 1956 airplane crash, a 1971 earthquake-caused hospital collapse, a 1980 hotel fire, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. He explains how each disaster spawned policy reforms, including new measures to streamline the provision of federal disaster relief, improve the coordination of air traffic control, and update building standards.
In so doing, Kraft aptly urges readers to reevaluate their assumptions about the so-called modern workplace by emphasizing that postwar technical advancements brought their own sets of risks. Just as the development and proliferation of commercial airliners enhanced the possibility of collisions, so too did the growing use of ammonium nitrate as a fertilizer create new dangers because of its explosive potential.
Even architectural innovations created new risks. After World War II, the proliferation of high-rise buildings spawned new fire hazards, as the example of a 1980 fire at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas demonstrates. That fire began on the ground floor but quickly sent toxic smoke billowing up to rooms on higher floors. In a similar vein, the “modern, energy-efficient design” of Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building exacerbated the impacts of the 1995 bombing (p. 170). The blast shattered the building's glass façade, which was designed to maximize natural sunlight. And, as Kraft reminds readers, a 1971 earthquake in southern California devastated workplaces in part because of postwar urban development. “Had the quake occurred only a quarter century earlier,” he notes, “nature would have had fewer structures to wreck” (p. 105).
Significantly, Kraft encourages readers to reconsider familiar tragedies through the lens of labor history, as workplace disasters with devastating impacts on employees. For instance, he underscores the fact that “commercial airliners” were not just “fast-moving objects filled with passengers” but also “workplaces where employees carried out a range of jobs” (p. 103). The 1956 airplane crash over the Grand Canyon, and others like it, must therefore be considered within the broader history of workplace hazards and safety reforms. In a similar light, he notes that existing literature on the Oklahoma City bombing devotes minimal attention to “the men and women who worked” in the federal building (p. 166). By placing workers at the center of his account, Kraft points to the particular risks that federal employees face.
Kraft admirably describes workers’ experiences, and his discussion of the long-term impacts of workplace disasters marks a significant contribution. As he points out, workers struggled with the physical and psychological effects of workplace disasters even as the destruction of their workplaces forced them to find new forms of employment or relocate to new work sites. Drawing on archival collections and personal interviews, Kraft details how workers struggled to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. He recounts employees dealing with “short attention spans and long memory lapses,” who “remained easily frightened and were often frustrated and fatigued” for “several months after the bombing.” One worker in the Social Security Administration described having “trouble accomplishing even the most basic tasks,” while another felt “scared to death” to answer the telephone as many callers asked about the bombing (p. 185). At the same time, these surviving employees relocated to temporary work sites, where they faced enlarged caseloads owing to staffing shortages.
Nevertheless, Kraft's broader argument that workplace disasters spur safety reforms might benefit from deeper engagement with the human actors, activist movements, and policy processes that drove reform efforts. More explicit discussion of such contingent factors in the book's introduction might offer a more nuanced understanding of how safety reforms are enacted, why reforms are enacted in response to some disasters but not others, and how the history of disasters relates to the broader history of campaigns promoting occupational health and safety.
Kraft provides greater specificity in individual chapters detailing each reform campaign. For instance, he explains how a combination of lawsuits brought by victims and intense press coverage weakened employers’ resistance to reforms in the wake of the fire at the MGM Grand Hotel. He also notes that, in several cases, safety reform efforts that emerged prior to disasters laid critical groundwork for post-disaster policy enactment. Still, his overall argument that workplace disasters spur safety reforms might provide a more satisfying explanation for why reforms efforts succeed, and it might account for cases in which reform efforts failed.
Moreover, Kraft points to the important roles of public officials, technical experts, and journalists in forcing reforms, but the book might benefit from greater consideration of social movements and broader public opinion. Though he notes the importance of public awareness in his discussions of media coverage, he might provide more concrete examples of public responses, such as public vigils, moments of silence, and letters to newspaper editors and politicians. Such efforts would bring greater attention to how human agency underlies the “patterns of havoc and reform” that Kraft identifies (p. 12).
Overall, Kraft's book contributes important and timely insights to a historical understanding of workplace disasters and safety reforms in the twentieth century. As the COVID-19 pandemic and recent mass shootings bring public attention to the varied threats facing American workers, this book reminds readers of the need to continually reevaluate and reform safety standards to meet the challenges of a new era.
