Accident prompts questions of construction safety regulations
An investigation is underway after three people were killed when they fell at a high-rise condo project near the University of Texas campus.
Worker safety advocates said they were saddened by Wednesday's construction accident, but they weren't surprised.
"That sort of story is always shocking and very upsetting, but based on what we found in our study, these abuses are widespread," Emily Timm, of the Workers Defense Project, said.
Click the link to access the statistics for the fatal occupational injuries, annual average hours worked, total employment, and rates of fatal occupational injuries by selected worker characteristics, occupations and industries for 2007, the last year the government took statistics.
A study done by local nonprofit Workers Defense Project and the University of Texas finds one-in-five Austin-area construction workers needed medical attention for work injuries in the past.
Statewide, 142 construction workers died on the job in 2007.
"That's nearly twice as many deaths as any other state in the country," Timm said. "And, those statistics exist because regulators are not doing their jobs, because we don't have strict enough policies to make sure employers are doing their part to ensure the safety of their workers."
• For more information on OSHA penalties see Section 17 of the OSH Act.
• If you are an employer, you may wish to contact the OSHA Consultation Program for your state for free on-site assistance in identifying and correcting hazards or setting up safety and health programs.
• You can also contact the OSHA Area Office nearest you to speak to the compliance assistance specialist about training and education in job safety and health issues.
• If you are a worker, you can call the nearest OSHA area office, or you can file a complaint online through the OSHA Workers' Page.
Construction worker Carlos Perez said he's seen it himself.
He said while general contractors usually follow safety standards, subcontractors often try to cut the corners.
"Subcontractors don't buy you helmets, gloves, masks, and they only ask you to have them when the supervisor comes by," Perez said.
Perez said the risks are even greater for non-English-speaking immigrant workers like him.
"They say, 'The only way I'll give you a job is if you go up there, even without the safety equipment,'" he said. "But, I have to work. So even though we go up trembling, we still have to work."
According to a federal study done last year, Hispanic workers do die at a higher rate than other laborers.
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"These are folks that probably don't speak English, probably don't know the cultural safety, probably don't know the industry as we perform it in the states," Frank Fuentes, of the U.S. Hispanic Contractors Association, said. "So a lot of it has to do with lack of training."
Authorities continue to investigate whether that was a factor in this week's deaths.
Their findings could reveal the clues to a bigger problem.
For the first study of its kind of Mexican worker deaths in the United States, the Associated Press talked with scores of workers, employers, advocates and government officials and analyzed years of federal safety and population statistics.
Among the findings:
- Mexican death rates are rising even as the U.S. workplace grows safer overall. In the mid-1990s, Mexicans were about 30 percent more likely to die than native-born workers; now they are about 80 percent more likely.
- Deaths among Mexicans increased faster than their population in the U.S. Between 1996 and 2002, as the number of Mexican workers grew by about half, from 4 million to 6 million, the number of deaths rose by about two-thirds, from 241 to 387. Deaths peaked at 420 in 2001.
- Though their odds of dying in the Southeast and parts of the West are far greater than the U.S. average, fatalities occur everywhere: Mexicans died cutting North Carolina tobacco and Nebraska beef, felling trees in Colorado and welding a balcony in Florida, trimming grass at a Las Vegas golf course and falling from scaffolding in Georgia.
- Even compared to other immigrants -- those who historically work America's hardest jobs -- what's happening to Mexicans is exceptional in scope and scale. Mexicans are nearly twice as likely as the rest of the immigrant population to die at work.
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