The installation and maintenance of toilet facilities in places of employment / United States Department of Labor, Women's Bureau.

Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The installation and maintenance of toilet facilities in places of employment / United States Department of Labor, Women's Bureau. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In eight States ** the health authority has adopted or is by law | charged with the administration of a plumbing code. In three of these—Indiana, Iowa, and Maine—the plumbing codes adopted are | based on the standard code issued by the United States Bureau of | Standards. In the District of Columbia there is no department of labor, and the inspection of sanitary conditions in workshops is left to inspec- tors in the department of health. Sanitary standards, which are issued as regulations by the Commissioners of the District, include a general regulation pertaining to toilets in work places and a plumbing code applying to all buildings or establishments. ESTABLISHMENTS COVERED BY SOME TYPE OF REGULATION IN THE VARIOUS STATES For the protection of workers, sanitary conditions need to be regulated by law as much in one type of establishment as in another. Every establishment in the State should be under the provisions of a regulatory measure. However, at the present time the large majority of statutes or regulations are restricted in application according to type or size of establishment, with the result that a great number of workers are unprotected by such provisions. Ac- cording to the text of the regulations or statements by officials, only in six States’ and in the District of Columbia are sanitary condi- tions in all establishments clearly covered, regardless of sex, by some type of regulation—whether under health or labor authority—except that plumbing codes, ordinarily administered by health authorities, usually apply to all establishments.*® . In four other States, California, Kentucky, Oregon, and Pennsyl- vania, toilets in all establishments employing women, or women and children, are regulated in some way. In one additional State, Okla- homa, all places where women work are covered with the exception of bank buildings.* In still another State, Nebraska, though the wording of the law seems to cover all establishments very clearly, the term “ other building where one or more persons are employed ” apparently is not construed to cover office buildings.** In this con- nection it is well to state that, as to the application of laws in the various States to office buildings, the information obtained by the bureau through its questionnaires is not complete, and as far as ac- tual practice in regard to their inspection is concerned, this les out- side the scope of the present study. However, any information that has been secured on the application of the law to office buildings has been included in the State summaries (see Part V). Because of the great numbers of workers in clerical occupations, a large per- 14 Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Ohio, and Wisconsin. 14 T]llinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. 146 Though QOhio’s labor law applies only to establishments where women are employed, there is a building code applying to all establishments which is administered by one of the divisions of the department of labor that really takes the place of a fairly compre- hensive and definite “labor law’’ because of the kind of provisions it contains. In Pennsylvania, though the labor statute on toilets applies only to places where women work, there is an industrial sanitary code including this subject and applying to all factories. 17 This statement is based on an opinion of the Criminal Court of Appeals in the State. 18'The Secretary of Labor, in reply to a question in regard to office buildings, stated that he “can not read anything into this section that is not there.” Similar cases may exist in other States, but not all regulations have been checked with this in view.
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