Los Alamos Revisited

LOS ALAMOS REVISITED: A WORKERS’ HISTORY, by Peter Malmgren and Kay Matthews (El Prado, NM:  Wink Books, 2017)

Los Alamos Revisited: A Workers’ History, by Peter Malmgren and Kay Matthews, preserves the untold stories of more than 150 everyday nuclear bomb workers who served our country since the Manhattan Project began during WWII. Through these oral histories we learn also about two often hidden dimensions of work at this critical atomic facility: the discrimination against Hispanic workers, and the myriad of chemical and radiological exposures suffered by all workers and their communities.  The authors should be commended for their tireless work in reclaiming and preserving these histories.

But with full respect for all their diligent efforts, I found myself wishing again and again for a second edition that goes even further. Even though I’m a reader who has spent the last 28 years helping to provide occupational health and safety training for atomic workers at weapons facilities (but not at Los Alamos), I still was yearning for more context and more history to accompany these excellent interviews. That desire comes in part because the Manhattan Project is one of the largest collective endeavors ever undertaken by our country. So to understand these workers more fully, we need a clearer picture of what that massive project entailed.  We need to know what was produced at Los Alamos during WWII, for example.  What were the key elements of its research and production tasks?  How was their task different from Oak Ridge and Hanford, and so on?

On a more tactile level, it would be good to know what the place looked like during WWII. What actually was needed to build such a bomb and where did that happen? From worker health and safety, and environmental perspectives, it would be important to further show that the worker exposures extended far beyond radiation. In many ways the Manhattan Project brought together nearly every toxic substance known to mankind.

Also, to make sense of a workers’ history, we would profit from a review of the broader history.  It would be good to lay out some kind of periodization, perhaps through simple eras like WWII, Cold War, post-Cold War and today, and fit the worker interviews into these periods where possible.  Also, how many workers were at Los Alamos during each of these periods?  Do we know the size of their budgets?  Also, I think most readers would be stunned to know how many nuclear explosions took place each week during the Cold War arms race in the 1950s.  These workers were in the eye of a nuclear testing storm helping to produce the fall-out that impacted the bones of children thousands of miles away.  Did they know about those effects?

Perhaps most importantly, the interviews made me hunger for more analysis of a key feature highlighted through these workers’ stories — the relationship between workers, especially Hispanic workers, and the nuclear weapons bureaucracy. There are many thought-provoking passages about the “arrogance” of the scientists, the politicians and the bureaucratic leadership. Clearly, there was discrimination, and just as clearly there was an abject failure to protect worker health, safety and the environment.

It is worth noting that when these Los Alamos workers describe their non-radiological exposures, they could also be describing the working conditions of tens of thousands of industrial workers during the same period. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that the late Tony Mazzocchi, an official of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, opened up a national conversation on worker safety and health, leading to the passage of OSHA. It turned out that all of American industry had been “arrogant” in this way.

But why?  In the private sector we could connect this arrogance to the drive for profits – money would have to be diverted to truly protect worker safety and health. But what’s the driving force within the public sector that leads to neglect of workers’ health and safety, and then to the failure to take responsibility for the exposures? And more importantly, what are the countervailing mechanisms needed to rectify it?

It could be argued that WWII and the Cold War put health and safety on the back burner. Sacrifices must be made in time of war, we are told. But, the growing environmental movement plus Mazzocchi’s work with atomic workers raised the profile of occupational safety and health.  It would be useful to know what exactly led to the establishment of the “Tiger Teams” mentioned by these workers – the national Department of Energy teams that audited the working and environmental health and safety conditions at nuclear weapons facilities.  I have repeatedly heard from atomic workers that these teams were the real deal that shook up complacent bureaucrats and improved working conditions. Today, in fact, a strong case could be made that the weapons facilities and clean-up process provide far better health and safety protections and training for workers than in other industries across the country.  This suggests that much can be done to counter that “arrogance” that often seems to be baked into large self-serving bureaucracies.

We need Peter Malmgren and Kay Matthews to use their prodigious skills to weigh in on these topics. If the Manhattan Project is perhaps the metaphor for the massive mobilizations we need in order to stave off pandemics and global warming, then we also need to know how to design such interventions in ways that protect workers and communities while also countering discrimination. How do we counter the “arrogance” of elites in such vital programs?  These worker interviews, thankfully, provide the raw material needed to enrich and enhance such critical discussions.

Reviewed by Les Leopold.  Les co-founded the Labor Institute (1976), a non-profit organization that designs research and educational programs on occupational safety and health, the environment and economics for unions, worker centers and community organizations.  He is currently helping to build a national economic educational train-the-trainer program with unions and community groups.  He is the author of Runaway Inequality: An Activist’s Guide to Economic Justice (Labor Institute Press, 2015), How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour: Why Financial Elites get away with siphoning off America’s Wealth (John Wiley and Sons, 2013); The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It, (Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009); and The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi, (Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2006).