No hazard pay in those days, it was part of the job. Chances are those guys may well have been former sailors who sailed "before the mast", so climbing rigging in the wind with no safety gear was (pardon the pun) "old hat". The old adage was "one hand for the ship, one hand for yourself".
I thought the same thing about how those guys kept their hats on in the wind up there. Maybe they wore tighter fitting hats.
The times those guys worked in were harder times. If you did not like the working conditions, you found something else to do in some other line of work- assuming you could afford to quit your job and move on. During the Great Depression, the story was told that on any highrise job in NYC where steel was being set, there were always a few unemployed men hanging around outside the jobsite fence. Whenver someone fell from the high steel, there were men ready to take his place, never mind the conditions.
During WWII, my cousin welded in Federal Shipbuilding in Kearney, NJ. My cousin used to give me odd bits of advice. One thing he used to tell me was never to coil my welding lead over my shoulder to take the weight of it off my hand holding the stinger (electrode holder). My cousin told me to make sure to tie my lead off to something, even if I had to temporarily weld a hook to some part of the job I was working on. My cousin told me the story of how he had this lesson hammered home. One night shift, he and another boilermaker welder were assigned to go up on the mast of some ship to weld some sort of joint or connection that had been set and fitted on day shift. They went up in bosn's chairs. My cousin told his partner to weld a hook to the side of the mast and tie his lead to it. The partner said he'd do fine with the lead looped around his shoulder. During the shift, someone came along the deck of the ship, looking for "spare" welding lead, to save having to drag more welding lead up onto the ship. Whomever this person was, they grabbed and tugged any lead they spotted, figuring the dayshift may well have left the lead coiled loose on some staging.
My cousin said when he raised his shield to put another sitck of electrode in his stinger, he did not see his partner's arc reflected off the mast, nor did ne hear the partner chipping off his weld. He looked oaver and saw the empty bosn's chair. About then, all hell broke loose as my cousin's partner had been pulled backwards out of his bosn's chair and fell to his death on the deck. As my cousin told it, he ate two lunches that night, and his late partner, being recently married, had packed a better lunch. My cousin was full of interesting tips he had learned the hard way.
You have to consider the times. My cousin had come thru the Great Depression. He had made extra money to feed his wife by racing stock cars on a dirt oval, and boxing what were called "smokers". If a man would get in the ring with strangers who were just as desperate to bring home a few bucks so the family could eat, climbing a mast to weld was not so fearsome. Most of the old guys who worked at jobs like those painters were pretty rough. They may well have learned their climbing and rigging skills on sailing ships, and may well have boxed to pick up a few bucks when out of work. They were a different breed. Whisky with a free lunch in the nearest saloon (free lunch being pickled eggs, hardtack crackers, herring and Limburger cheese, maybe a pickled pig's foot...), and they probably chewed cut plug tobacco while up painting (claiming the whisky and tobacco cut the paint fumes and kept their throats wet and opened).
I got out of engineering school in 1972 and went to work for Bechtel on powerplant construction. In 1972, there was no fall protection required. Ironworkers wore belts with lanyards. More often than not, these belts were used to hang spud wrenches and bolt bags off of, not so much for fall protection. I was a young engineer, and I soon got up on the steel with the ironworkers and boilermakers. I got to where I was walking the iron. I remember on this one job, I was the engineer in charge of a contract to install some new boiler flue gas breeching. It was large fabricated plate steel ducting, run on support "bents". The biggest section of the ducting was at least 10' wide x 20 ft high. It sloped up to connect with a flue in a 400 ft tall concrete stack. The tie in point to the flue in the stack was about 100 ft off the ground. As the job went along, there was a question about the centerline of the breeching. The contractor and I were going to have to work it out and establish the centerline. I took a transit on its tripod, and put it over my shoulder. The boilermakers took the canvas bucket with the steel tape, plumb and a few other tools. I remember we took an elevator to the top of the boilerhouse in the existing portion of the powerplant. We walked upstairs to the roof, and we set up the transit over a centerline marked on the roof, took a backsight, then turned the instrument 180 degrees. One of the boilermakers walked out on the open iron and I put him on line. He made a couple of punch marks. Then, it was my turn. I had to step off the parapet of the roof and down onto a 10" wideflange beam, carrying the transit on my shoulder. No "cooning" (sitting on the beam and sliding along) when you are carrying a transit. No belt, no harness, no nets. I got to this connection point, where several horizontal members met. We set up the transit (no optical plummet, old style plumb bob on string). One of the boilermakers cooned the iron and made some heavy punch marks for the points on the legs of the transit so they would not slide off the steel. I took a backsight and carried my line onward. I remember trying to sight through the transit, focus the image and sharpen the reticle, all the while keeping my feet planted solidly on the steel. We did what we had to do. The contractor had a young civil engineer, fresh out of school. He walked the open iron like he'd be going down his own street, and used to stand there with a surveyor's field book, writing notes or readings like he was standing on the ground. That civil engineer and I both got our Professional Engineer's Licenses at the same time, putting some of our time in on that job, and sitting the exam in April of 1977.
After awhile, I got kind of cocky about going on the steel. The boiler drum elevation was 193 ft above ground level. That was a lot of stairs. The steel erecting contractor had a couple of Manitowac "Vicon" cranes on site. The boilermakers introduced me to the habit of "riding the ball". If several of us needed to go up or down, we might hook a "scale box" (aka, a "skip") to the whip line of the crane. If it was just one or two of us, we rode the hook on the whipline. Lunchtimes were another story. We had one half hour start to finish, for lunch. As soon as the "washup whistle" sounded, if we were up at the drum elevation, we either jumped into the skip or hopped onto the hook, depending what was available. Down we'd go, with the operating engineer in the crane using the "Vicon" control to give us fast acceleration and a smooth stop. One of us would hang wide off the hook with an arm extended to signal the crane operator or his groundman. Often, one of the foremen would have a stake rack truck sitting ready, engine idling. We'd jump off the hook or out of the scale box and onto the bed of the stake rack or a pickup. Off we would race to the local tavern.
This is another bygone thing, the heavy semi-hydraulic lunches in the taverns. At the door of the tavern was a line of men off the jobsite, many in their connecting belts with spud wrenches jangling. No table or chair in that old tavern had four matching legs. The toilets were lagged to the floor with 2" flat bar, and the toilet stall partitions were 1/4" diamond plate welded to 2" black steel pipe. A galvanized steel piss trough with a perforated pipe completed the fittings in the men's room. Walking into the tavern, you'd come to a table with shots of rye whisky (probably Overholt or Kessler's in those days) lines up. If you were so inclined, you grabbed a shot and downed it. Next table, there were opened quarts of beer. You grabbed a quart of beer, took a good pull to chase the whisky. As you held onto your quart of beer, you moved to the next table. Two older men, gimped up from either iron mining, railroading, or logging, were cooking bratwursts and kielbasa on electric griddles. You hollered out whether you wanted a brat or a kilebasa. They handed it to you on a roll, and you slopped on good straight horseradish, and a slug of chopped raw onions. You took the first seat you spotted, sat with whomever was there, and ate your sandwich as quick as you could while polishing off the remains of your quart of beer.
You got up to leave and the bartender hollered: "whut'd ya have ?" And you gave the standard answer for the place: "A bump, a beer, and a horsec--k sandwich". With that, you bolted out the door and into the truck and back to work, sliding thru the gate as the whistle to end lunch sounded.
Back up on the iron or perhaps some figures and going over drawings in the afternoon would follow. In those days, no one thought anything of engineers, supervision, and crafts going up on the open iron or going to the taverns for lunch and then back up on the iron. It was the times we worked in.
The old ironworkers used to claim that tying off with the lanyard on a belt made for a false sense of security. They also claimed the lanyard was a royal PITA to manage when they were moving around up on the open steel or trying to "make a point" (get a piece of structural steel hanging off the crane to line up at a connection).
I got to liking riding the headache ball. It was something I never got tired of or scared to do. Maybe there was that sense of security that came of having my foot solidly planted on the "becket" (wedge type wire rope socket above the ball) , or in the hook (on smaller cranes) and at least one hand solidly gripping the wire rope. I blindly trusted the operating engineer running the crane. I figured if he was on the job and had lasted, setting structural steel and boiler parts, he was good. Any operator who was rough with a crane when setting steel or boiler parts would be sent back to the union hall immediately- the other crafts would refuse to work with him running the crane, claiming he was a "cowboy" and unsafe.
We did not get hazard pay. It was part of the job of being an engineer on a powerplant construction site. No one asked me if I was afraid of heights, afraid of tight spaces, sensitive to constant references to sexual activity and certain body parts, or sensitive to guys cussing and yelling, hurling ethinic slurs, and cussing and yelling intially at me. That was the job and those were the times. I stuck with it and for awhile, was as wild and crazy as everyone else.
One time, years later, I was on a Power Authority jobsite at one of our remote hydroelectric plants. A contractor had a crane on a barge, faced up to the dam's upstream side. I needed to get out to the barge to go over the job with the foreman. No way to get to the barge unless someone happened to be in the workboat. I saw the crane operator standing in the sun, and saw how much "stick" (boom) was on the crane. I hollered out, and the crane operator pointed to himself. I nodded my head "yes". I then gave the signal for "use the whipline" (hold one forearm up, tap the elbow of it with your opposing hand). the operator nodded and climbed up to his crane cab. He swung the crane and I signalled him to boom down then swing in a bit, then lower the whip line. I got my foot on the hook, left hand gripping the wire rope, right hand stuck out signal. Another Authority engineer from corporate was standing there saying how I should not be doing what I was going to do, that I was crazy, and similar. I got flown out to the barge, nice and easy. I had not ridden the whipline of a crane in over 20 years, but it was as enjoyable as when I was a young engineer.
Nowadays, it is funny how some things just are readily apparent. I was on a job and the ironworkers were shorthanded, working down in a gate well. They needed the crane (on a barge) to make a pick for them. I happened to be up on the walkway above the gate well. The ironworkers hollered up to me. I had never really worked with this crew, but I guess they figured by my worn work shoes and worn Carhartt coat and scratched hardhat I was OK. I hollered accross to the crane operator, and gave him the signals, including signalling to creep the load down in small increments so the ironworkers could line things up and make the connection. All the while, I was standing on a web of concrete with a deep hole on either side, looking down at the ironworkers and the load, signalling the crane and not thinking about where I was standing. Old habits and instincts, I guess.