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

Since the triangle shirtwaste fire the public interest’s inseriously attacking occupational deaths, injuries, and disease has waxed andwaned. Measure by legislative activity and media coverage it currently hasreached a new high. By the mid 1980s much of the battle to deter unsafe workingconditions moved to another arena, the state courts. Criminal prosecution ofsupervisors and management officials is now an important option and is thesubject of this program. According to John Rand, former director of safetyresearch at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, deathscaused by work related injuries result in more years of human life loss thanthose caused by cancer and heart disease combined. The cost to the UnitedStates alone exceeds 50 billion dollars.First of all, criminal sanction in the Occupational Safety & Health Act orrarely applied, now we’re not talking about OSHA, we’re talking about criminalsanctions against employees or management by local or state district attorneys.