Quote Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
Different times. People cared jack about their own bodies, and considered it just normal that a given job would wear out your body at a certain rate. Even today, many people like bricklayers and ditch diggers have the same attitude. I was told that using gloves and goggles and respiration masks on a construction site is a sure way to draw flak from old hands. .
When I began doing ironwork in the '60s we frequently didn't wear hard hats and in the summer never wore shirts. I didn't wear gloves most of the time and my hands were like leather.

When OSHA began we had to wear shirts and hard hats on 98% of the jobs. Tying off was almost non existent though. I was on one job where they wanted everyone but the connectors to tie off when they got to a working point.

One of the guys got himself fired because he flatly refused to tie off. Planking every 2nd floor on story jobs was another almost non existent thing unless you were in NYC or like that. I here it is a lot more safety conscious nowadays but I don't know for sure.

I was in my late teens when I started and when your young you think you're invincible. Tell someone that is young that the job will kill them by the time they are 50 or 60 and it seems a million years away.