Monday afternoon at the 2015 AIHce in Salt Lake City features the annual Jeffrey S. Lee Lecture, this year given by Garrett Brown, titled, “Two Decades Spent Helping Workers Protect Their Own Health and Safety in a Pitiless, Globalized Economy.”
Garrett D. Brown, MPH, CIH, is a retired special assistant to the Chief of Cal/OSHA, California Division of Occupational Safety and Health. Says Brown: “Although the world economy has been ‘global’ for centuries, the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement marked a formal transition of the U.S. economy to increasing use of and reliance on global supply chains. The ‘off-shoring’ of manufacturing of many consumer goods has meant a transfer of occupational health and safety hazards to countries that lack the political will and resources (financial, technical and human) to protect workers on the ever-expanding factory floors outside the developed world.