Tony Mazzocchi

Tony Mazzocchi, a longtime advocate for workplace safety whose disenchantment with traditional politics led him to organize the United States' first labor party in 70 years, died at his home in Washington, D.C., Saturday. He was 76 and had pancreatic cancer.

Mazzocchi brought 1,400 union leaders to a Cleveland convention hall in 1996 to form the Labor Party. Labeled a foolhardy idea by union leaders and political analysts, it was conceived in an era of waning union strength and has fewer than 14,000 members.

Although disappointed by the fledgling party's slow growth, Mazzocchi remained committed to its pro-worker agenda, focused on single-payer national health insurance, free higher education and worker rights.

His slogan: "The bosses have two parties. We need one of our own!"

He was considered "the Ralph Nader of industrial safety." Along with Nader and other activists, he was a key figure behind the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970, often called the most far-reaching pro-labor law of the past half-century.

"Over the last 30 years, nobody comes close to him," said Nader, who praised Mazzocchi's leadership on the drives to pass OSHA, the Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act and other major legislation.

"He is an icon," said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association. "More than anyone, he is the unsung hero of organized labor."

A former secretary-treasurer of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union, Mazzocchi advised its most famous member, Oklahoma plutonium plant worker Karen Silkwood, whose struggles to ensure plant safety and tragic death inspired the 1983 Oscar-nominated movie "Silkwood."

Mazzocchi grew up in the New York borough of Brooklyn, the son of a unionized garment worker who lost the family home because of medical bills for his cancer-stricken wife. She died when Mazzocchi was 6.

A ninth-grade dropout, he served as a combat soldier in the European theater during World War II, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge and other key campaigns. He was among the first soldiers to reach the Nazi death camps.

After the war, he worked as an auto worker, steelworker and in the construction trades.

He is survived by five daughters, Geraldine Amitin of Atlanta; Carol Irish of Rochester, N.Y.; Linda Nagle of Houston, Elizabeth Mazzocchi of Boston, and Kristina Mazzocchi of Washington; a son, Anthony, of Brooklyn; five grandchildren; and his partner, Katherine Isaac.

- Los Angeles Times