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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Here in Germany about 50% of high school graduates go into a traditional vocational program, many of which are crafts. Electrical work, the car industry, machinery, carpentry, woodwork and so forth.

My family (with me being the first exception) is all blue collar and I understand that construction is uniquely taxing physically but from my parents and people younger I've never heard horror stories about lost fingers or anything like that you're used to from very old people who work in trades. It's definitely possible to do these jobs safely and with good pay nowadays and safety regulations as well as better tools have aided a lot.

A lot of it I feel has to to with culture. If you have a guild system or something comparable that values the crafts and make sure payment and standards are met it's very different from letting people work themselves into the ground.

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I've only heard the, you know, missing-finger classic table saw horror stories very indirectly, honestly. My parents both spoke of OSHA rules like they were the gospel of the earth below, and the union had the power to ruin the company's day if they weren't following them. Non-union work here is very, very different, though -- some stories aren't mine to repeat, but I'll note "Helpers, construction trades" here:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.t05.htm

Even on following-the-rules job sites, "safely" is always kind of relative; when lifting and carrying and repetitive motion can be the causes of disabling injuries, it gets really hard to define bright lines with which you can protect yourself over decades. To some extent, taking time and being careful are the guards you have, but ... any American workplace knows that having your employees exercise wide individual discretion to set an appropriate pace -- well, that doesn't sound like Maximizing Efficiency, does it? (Sorry, I did try to tone down the bitterness here.)

Actually, there's a specific gauge on that I'd be curious to compare against, even anecdotally, for how things differ there: how common are people getting hernias at work?

It happened to my father - lost his two right middle fingers on a table saw. I suppose this was before OSHA rules had wider-reaching impact, because he lost them in the late 60s (while working on construction for the NYC housing authority ... so it could have been union at that time, but I don't remember what he said.)

Table saws are no joke, even in the best of circumstances! There definitely is still risk even when you're managing that risk well. (And it doesn't matter how many videos of it I watch, that SawStop stuff still feels like a miracle every time you see a hot dog spared.)

Table saws are deceptively dangerous - because they’re so large and fixed they feel safer than they are.

It’s definitely one of the “think three times and then do it slow and safe” tools in the shop.

While the SawStop is definitely impressive, almost any modern table saw is safer than one from the 60's due to the standardization of riving knives. For those who don't know, it's the metal fin behind the saw blade, and it's thicker than the body of the blade but thinner than the teeth. It reduces the chances of wood binding on the saw blade (and resulting kickback) by a large amount. They're a required component by many countries and standards bodies.

Add in cheap 3d-printed push blocks, push sticks, and feather guides and almost no one is losing digits these days unless they're willfully ignoring safe practices or using the wrong tool for the job. Tracked saws and 3d printed router jigs have also added options when a piece would be awkward or unsafe to table saw.

Thanks for sharing this: I'd never even heard of riving knives. Wild to think of how many technological improvements like that have made the world safer/better without schmucks like me having any idea.

I worked in a job that employed lots of disabled blue collar workers.

It’s the joints: bad knees, bad backs.

It’s not like back in the day where you get missing fingers. That’s really rare.

But the steady grind of lifting, carrying, lifting, carrying, again and again destroys the joints.

That’s harder to regulate away.

Hauling materials breaks your body over time. I know from experience.

This is quite interesting to me, because I've been into lifting and body building at times in my life and the research was clear: within limits, this is very good for the human body. So I'm quite confident to say that there's nothing inherently bad about lifting, pushing, twisting, pulling, turning, and holding heavy things. Quite the opposite. So the question then becomes: is this about technique? Are these labourers lifting with their backs, for example? Are they just never taught to lift things correctly? Or is this about dangerous workplaces? Or is this about repetitive strain? Heavy lifting is good for the body, but maybe not 12 hours of the same heavy lifting.

IMHO, all of these can be relieved through workplace reform. In other words, manual labour doesn't have to result in a broken body. Labourers can be taught how to lift correctly. They can be given a safe environment; and they can be rotated to lots of different tasks to prevent RSI.

When you lift weights, you can choose a weight that’s appropriate to you. When it gets too heavy, you stop. When you’re finished, you rest for a day or two. When you feel a twinge, you easy up or take a rest day.

When you’re lifting heavy things for a job, you lift whatever needs to be lifted in whatever motion it needs, with incentives to do it quickly. If you’re tired, you lift it anyway. If you feel a twinge, you probably ignore it because it’s probably nothing. Then you do it again the next day regardless of whether you feel like it.

Some of that can be mitigated by workplace rules, but it needs pretty radical overstaffing or acceptance of considerably slower work, neither of which Capital is a big fan of.

Lifting, twisting, turning, etc heavy things isn’t intrinsically bad, but it is intrinsicallyr risky. In a gym environment you have the ability to control that risk.

As a lifter you have full control over how many reps you do, you have all the time in the world to make sure your form is good before lifting, you don’t need to move around while carrying that weight, and you’re lifting conveniently-shaped weights.

Also, even the most well-maintained mechanical device will eventually suffer from material fatigue when put under load for significant amounts of time. Our bodies are no different.

JFYI, here (Italy, possibly all EU, but I am not sure) the max weight of a sack of cement (or similar, gypsum, plaster etc.) is since quite a few years 25 kg, but it once was 50 kg.

A "sane" max limit is 30 kg for a "normal" worker in good shape, so the 25 kg makes a lot of sense.

There was a precise technique to lift the 50 kg sack and put it on your shoulder, one single, tiny mistake in the speed or in the amplitude of the movement and it was very, very likely you would strain your back.

In the old times it was rather common as an accident on building sites, and anyway even people that never made a mistake have had their backs ruined over the years.

The "main" study/manual on the matter is actually US originated, by NIOSH, dating to 1994, that has been recently updated:

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/94-110/default.html

not limited to construction only, it applies on whatever activities imply moving loads, particularly if in a repetitive manner.

In Germany you can still buy 40 kg sacks (but 25 kg seems the default?) but it always seemed very stupid to me. Rather move something half the weight twice than twice the weight once.

However if you are doing it professionally, why not have your underlings move twice the weight? Time is money and all that, besides, if you don’t do it, your competitors probably are so if you don’t want to go under, you’re going to have to do the same thing.

Because that's a shitty, unethical way to operate. Yes, the competitors are also

> So I'm quite confident to say that there's nothing inherently bad about lifting, pushing, twisting, pulling, turning, and holding heavy things. Quite the opposite.

Technically correct I guess? The thing is, in construction there is a lot less latitude for you to choose a) from where to lift b) where to put down c) how much you're going to lift d) how often.

> So the question then becomes: is this about technique? Are these labourers lifting with their backs, for example? Are they just never taught to lift things correctly?

rolls eyes

> Or is this about repetitive strain?

Mostly. In your gym lifting, do you do 300 reps a day? For five or six days per week? For 48 weeks of the year? For ten to forty years? I bet you have more rest days than that.

> is this about technique?

Technique is impossible to apply consistently in blue-collar jobs. You're not necessarily standing on a flat, stable, firm, grippy floor, lifting a stable, ideally-shaped, easily grasped, rigid, non-slippery mass straight up and down close to your torso. There are wind, rain, cold, heat, and much more to deal with.

> Labourers can be taught

This is broken thinking. For health and safety, tasks must be redesigned to fit humans, not the other way around.

Edited to add: humans get tired, get distracted, take shortcuts, hurry to get the job done, or simply make mistakes. Any task design that doesn't account for these and still keep people safe is faulty.

>Are they just never taught to lift things correctly?

Part of it is that you find yourself having to lift in awkward positions often while you're having to carry heavy materials through obstacle courses, up on ladders and down stairs in ways that you'll inevitably have to compromise optimal form all while the wage clock is ticking so you have to hurry. In weightlifting you're afforded proper time and place to practice good form. That's coming from a Carpenter for twenty years and a weightlifter for four. Carpentry and a vehicle wreck pretty much destroyed my back but weightlifting and what I've learned from it has helped restore it somewhat.

Interesting. I've often heard that athletes in even non-contact high school sports need to lift weights - to protect at-risk joints by strengthening the various muscles around them.

It would be extremely nice if mandatory weight training could greatly reduce the incidence of injuries and "wear out" in blue collar workers...

Besides all the other things people are saying about the difference between work and lifting in the gym have you spent much time with older power lifters? Almost uniformly they’ll have joint, neck and back issues.

The human body needs to run in a pretty thin zone of activity. Too little and you get the obesity issue, too much and if breaks. And that band is changing as you age.

If that physical activity is by choice and easily changed you can stay healthy a very long time, but that’s not how it is when it’s your job.

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