Safety first? I don't think so.

 Pick up the pace indeed.  I wonder who wrote that.  It is not an "official" company sign like "hard hat area" as it has been scribbled on a piece of hardboard.  I saw it as I passed a construction site the other day.  This site is Union.  Either a bootlicker or a supervisor scribbled that on there. But it reflects the truth, what work is all about. No matter how much they go on about safety, or have safety regulations, the bottom line is profit.

Regulations and concern for safety arose despite the bosses not from them.  Because violations of safety regulations or serious injury can be punishable by fines or costly lawsuits, the employers comply to a degree that it affects profits. But the first and foremost consideration is money no matter what they say publicly.

Construction is a dangerous field.  The Department of Labor estimates that more than 150,000 construction-related injury accidents happen every year.  Though construction fatalities declined 19% in 2008 and 16% in 2009 and are down by a third from 2006, according to the DofL, this is primarily due to the massive layoffs in construction or halting of construction spending and projects due to the capitalist economic crisis. Hours worked in the private construction industry fell 27% between 2008 and 2010.

Here in California, 32,000 construction jobs were lost between December 2009 and December 2010. There has been an increase in construction employment though and we will no doubt see the injury and fatality figures grow as, and if construction increases significantly and that is very much dependent on housing. The point is that the makeshift sign (which could have been written as a warning I suppose) reflects the reality of the workplace.  The attacks on the public sector are an effort to eliminate a more humane and safer workplace and bring it more in to line with private industry.

There are two sources of power in the workplace, the bosses who own and control it, and the organized workers. Changing the balance of power in favor of the latter is what will increase safety at work but liberating this Labor process from private ownership and collectivizing it is what will solve the problem in our favor.