[June 13th marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers, a controversial moment made possible by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Ellsberg and other whistleblowers, leading up to a weekend post on one of the true heroes of the Trump era.]
On two
well-known and important sides to Silkwood’s
story of whistleblowing and its consequences, and one that needs more
attention.
Thanks in no
small measure to Meryl
Streep’s Academy Award-nominated performance as Silkwood in Mike Nichols’ 1983 film,
some of the key elements of Karen Silkwood’s story are quite familiar, yet remain
important for us to remember. Certainly the most famous is her mysterious
death in a car crash, almost certainly a murder orchestrated in some form
by the powers that be at the Kerr-McGee
nuclear fuel fabrication site in Oklahoma against whom she was in the process
of blowing the whistle. While we will likely never known for certain who
killed Karen Silkwood (a familiar refrain from the period that became the
name of a
1981 book on the case), there’s no doubt that her case reveals the genuine
danger that whistleblowers face, especially when (as is so often the case) they
go up against the nation’s biggest and most powerful corporate interests. Such danger
can seem like the realm of conspiracy theorists or political thriller films, but
Karen Silkwood reminds us that it’s all too real.
Of course, the
danger to Karen Silkwood’s health and life had begun long before her death, and
was at the heart of the source of her whistleblowing in the first place: the plutonium
contamination to which she and (she alleged, and as has subsequently
been confirmed) many of her coworkers at the site had been exposed. While
the cause of Silkwood’s accident and death could not be proven, her
contamination certainly could be and was, leading to a successful lawsuit by
Silkwood’s family against Kerr-McGee (or rather, the company
settled out of court for $1.38 million without admitting guilt, but I’d
call that successful enough). This prominent and important detail of Silkwood’s
story helps us remember that workplace health
and safety concerns aren’t just part of the history of labor in the United
States (which is often where we locate them, in the 19th century
conditions that gave rise to the labor movement)—they have remained central to
labor struggles and successes in the 20th century and into the 21st
as well.
Speaking of the
labor movement, that’s one aspect of Silkwood’s famous story that to my mind has
not received enough attention: the role
of union organizing and activism in her personal story and that of the site’s
workers overall. When Silkwood got a divorce, moved to Oklahoma (from Texas)
with her three children, and got a job at the Kerr-McGee site, she almost took
part in a strike with the Oil,
Chemical, & Atomic Workers Union; shortly thereafter she became the
first woman elected to the site’s union bargaining committee and was assigned
to investigate health and safety issues. Which is to say, both Silkwood’s contamination
and her whistleblowing apparently took place not in her role as a worker (which
is how I had always thought of them), but rather in her capacity as a labor
representative and leader. As dangerous as work has always been in America, labor
activism and leadership are at least as dangerous, and also of course comprise
dangers undertaken for the communal benefit of one’s fellow workers (in that
job and everywhere). Karen Silkwood braved those dangers for all her colleagues,
and her life and death alike reflect that reality as much as any other side of
work and whistleblowing.
Next
WhistleblowerStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other whistleblowers you’d highlight?
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