Because PPE is uncomfortable and safe practices (including PPE) slow you down. If not forced by management (or the government), many people will do stuff that s

Because PPE is uncomfortable and safe practices (including PPE) slow you down. If not forced by management (or the government), many people will do stuff that shortens their lives by 30 years, and push others to do it as well. Because a lot of preventative measures for this stuff affect how the facility is built and how the process is designed, and an individual worker can't change that. Because if you're running a business and you don't actively push your workers to cut corners, you will get outcompeted by businesses who do. And then the workers will go work there, because those are the only businesses left and this is the trade they know. And if they try to do it the safe way, they'll get fired because they're 5 (or 25) percent slower than the workers who don't. Because unions, which might be able to do something about some of those things, are (a) fighting game theory a lot of the time, (b) captured not infrequently, and (c) legally hobbled more often than you'd hope. All of which is obvious if you're not intentionally trying really hard to ignore it.