970, job-related accidents accounted for more than 14,000 worker deaths. Nearly 2 1/2 million workers were disabled. An estimated ten times as many person-days were being lost from job-related injuries as were lost from labor strikes. The incidence of new cases of occupational diseases totaled 300,000 (U.S. Department of Labor, 1995, p. 1). Armed with these statistics, labor activists "using powerful imagery, stress[ed] the pain, devastation, and feeling of powerlessness that individual workers experience from occupational illnesses" (Hilgartner, 1985, pp. 33-34). Labor was thus able to garner bi-partisan support for workplace reform among members of Congress.
Traditionally perceived as a supporter of labor, the Democratic Party was already predisposed to workplace reform. As early as 1966, President Lyndon Johnson made occupational health and safety a political issue. Johnson's Great Society programs focused on social regulation, and workplace reform was seen as a natural extension of these efforts. Besides, workplace regulation was perceived as not
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