Excerpt: In 1911 more than 100 workers, all women, were killed in the Triangle Shirtwaste fire. All exit doors to the factory were bolted closed, preventing the employees’ escape. Some jumped to their deaths. Others were burned in the fire, or died from the smoke. The local district attorney charged the owners of the factory with manslaughter. Despite the fact that the defendants were eventually acquitted, employers were put on notice that their status was not a shield against immunity from criminal prosecution for failure to eliminate workplace hazards.

Since the triangle shirtwaste fire the public interest’s in seriously attacking occupational deaths, injuries, and disease has waxed and waned. Measure by legislative activity and media coverage it currently has reached a new high. By the mid 1980s much of the battle to deter unsafe working conditions moved to another arena, the state courts. Criminal prosecution of supervisors and management officials is now an important option and is the subject of this program. According to John Rand, former director of safety research at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, deaths caused by work related injuries result in more years of human life loss than those caused by cancer and heart disease combined. The cost to the United States alone exceeds 50 billion dollars. First of all, criminal sanction in the Occupational Safety & Health Act or rarely applied, now we’re not talking about OSHA, we’re talking about criminal sanctions against employees or management by local or state district attorneys.