Deaths among Latino workers rise

[Omaha Steve]

http://transitional.pww.org/article/view/16460/

Author: Pepe Lozano
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/20/09 15:15

The number of Latino workers who die on the job has risen 76 percent since 1992, even as the total number of workplace deaths has declined, federal statistics show.

In 1992 the number of reported Latino deaths on the job was 533. In a 2007 tally, the latest available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 937 Latino workers died while working.

Overall fatalities throughout the U.S. fell from 6,217 to 5,657 within the same period.

“I am particularly concerned about our Hispanic workforce, as Latinos often work low-wage jobs and are more susceptible to injuries in the workplace than other workers,” U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told USA Today. “There can be no excuses for negligence in protecting workers, not even a language barrier.”

In Texas, Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials investigated 50 Latino workplace deaths last year. OSHA has already investigated 21 fatalities this year, including the deaths of three Austin workers who fell 11 stories from a collapsed scaffolding in June.

Falling off roofs, run over by trucks or crushed under heavy machinery is all too common says the Austin-based Workers Defense Project. So far this year four deaths among Latino workers have been reported there.

More than half of construction-related deaths in Texas are Latino workers.

FULL story at link.

[imdjh]

1. Seems like a nobrainer.

Like the article said, more latino workers would mean more deaths. The number may have increased 76% but how would we know what the appropriate increase relative to representation would be unless we could know how many there are to start with? With the added variable of seasonal, transient, and uncounted illegal workers, I don't know how this could be compared scientifically to the workforce overall. Another thing is that in the same period of time there appears to have been a huge shift from the perhaps poisonous but not generally as dangerous agricultural and maintenance workforce into the construction trades. The construction trades are, as I understand it, one of the driving forces in the disparity between male and female life expectancies.

Immigrant workers without legal documentation are less likely to join a union, studies show. But it’s precisely these workers that are doing the most dangerous work for longer hours with little to no protections, immigrant rights leaders say.

All workers including immigrants should be guaranteed protections under the law regardless of what country they originally come from or what language they speak, and should receive proper training when it comes to risky jobs, critics say. The ability to join a union is a basic American right and every worker should be assured such protections, they add.

Illegal workers are protected under US labor law, OSHA, and state laws for workers comp, none of which does them much good when they are dead, but they are protected.

[Wednesdays]

2. K&R

:kick: