Tony Mazzocchi

With unprecedented skill and effectiveness, Tony Mazzocchi spent decades advocating for the safety and health of workers as a labor leader and environmental activist. He forged his transformative ideas as a young man working in a cosmetics plant on Long Island, where he experienced firsthand the effects of harmful toxins on workers. After achieving leadership positions in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union, he built on those ideas and created a movement. Inspired by the environmental advocacy of the time, Mazzocchi shaped a new coalition of workers, unions, physicians, and public health professionals to demand an end to an exploitative system that destroyed lives and tore families apart. When the Occupation Safety and Health Act was signed in 1970, giving workers for the first time a fundamental right to a safe and healthful workplace, President Richard M. Nixon publicly acknowledged Mazzocchi's instrumental role in the legislation. Until his death in 2002, Tony continued to drive safety and health reforms with unbridled energy, tenacity, and compassion.