Massachusetts Workers Compensation Lawyers Blog

Construction projects, road repair, and other outdoor maintenance projects often take place as the weather heats up. Though workers may be out of the elements, including rain and snow, they may also face an additional threat–heat illness.

This summer, OSHA is working to create awareness around the deadly (but often overlooked) risk of heat illness. OSHA’s nationwide initiative, the “Heat Illness Prevention Campaign,” is focused on teaching workers and employers about the potential dangers of hot weather.

Every year, thousands of workers get sick from exposure to heat. In the most severe cases, workers can lose their lives. Our Boston workers’ compensation lawyers have seen a wide range of injuries and illnesses impact the lives of America’s workers. We are dedicated to preventing these accidents and helping victims and their families recover in the event of an injury or death.

Any workers who are exposed to humidity and hot weather could be at risk of heat illness. Workers who work with heavy machinery or who exert an extreme amount of physical energy in hot climates are at additional risk. If you are a worker who does heavy lifting, wears heavy protective clothing, or you work with equipment that projects heat, you should take extra precaution to prevent heat illness. While some workers can build up a tolerance to heat stroke over time, new workers should be especially aware of the risk of how heat may affect their body and remain particularly wary of heat illness symptoms.

What is heat illness? Under extreme heat conditions, sweating is not sufficient to cool down the human body. Workers who are wearing heavy protective gear are unable to effectively cool down. Even workers who are wearing light clothing may not be able to reduce body temperature from dangerous levels.

Heat illnesses can range in severity from heat rash and heat cramps to heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Some cases can cause permanent brain damage and the most severe heat illnesses can result in death. If you suspect that you are suffering from a heat illness you should seek medical attention as soon as possible. Similarly, if you suspect that a fellow co-worker is suffering from heat illness, you should take immediate action and call 9-1-1.

There are a number of precautions you can take to prevent heat stroke. OSHA advises the simple formula of water, rest, and shade. Employees and employers should be aware of the dangers of heat illness and take necessary steps to prevent illness and injury. This may include drinking water, taking breaks, and limiting time out in direct sunlight. Employers should implement these prevention tips during training if workers are going to be in the heat for long periods of time.

Since the 2011 launch of the campaign, OSHA has disseminated information to more than 7 million workers and employers. The information has come in the form of posters, cards, and training guides. OSHA aims to prevent these illnesses as well as give employees and employers the information they need to react quickly in the event of heat illness. OSHA has also partnered with other state agencies and organizations to create more awareness around heat illness.
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Dangerous working conditions continue to threaten the health and safety of employees. While work-related injury or disease could affect any worker, some industries and individuals are at a higher risk.

Recent studies and reports indicate that minorities and immigrant workers in construction, maintenance and other hazardous industries are at greater risk of accidents, injury, and fatality. Our Boston workers’ compensation attorneys are experienced in representing victims of injury and death, including minorities, immigrants and their families impacted by workplace accidents.

The Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA) is the agency charged with regulating workplace injury and creating safe working conditions to protect workers. OSHA has the authority to create laws and regulations and to enforce these regulations by assigning penalties when a company or organization is in violation of OSHA standards. OSHA is responsible for overseeing workplace conditions, including equipment, training, and safety policies. When a company fails to meet guidelines or violates a regulation, OSHA can fine that agency, even if no accident or injury occurred.

Foreign-born workers in the United States constitute 16% of the labor market. These workers have a higher likelihood of working in service occupations including production, transportation, moving occupations, natural resources development industries, maintenance, and construction. Nearly half of this foreign-born labor force market is Hispanic.

As we mentioned in a previous post, more blacks and Hispanics are injured on the job. This may because they make up a higher portion of workers in dangerous industries. Undocumented workers in these industries may also be less likely to speak up about OSHA violations or other known dangerous working conditions. Many undocumented workers are worried about deportation. They may also not realize that they are also protected by OSHA and can file civil actions against negligent individuals or entities when they suffer an injury.

While some critics of OSHA suggest that its standards limit hiring capabilities, the agency has saved lives and prevented injury to millions of American workers. Despite this suggestion, it has been proven that OSHA inspections can also save companies billions of dollars in fees and costs for workers’ compensation, lost hours and the lost productivity that can occur after a workplace injury or fatality.

Workers who are in fishing, logging, construction and the oil industries are at the greatest risk of fatality. In any industry, companies must be held to high standards to protect the interests of employees. Worksites that remain unexamined or fall below OSHA standards could create a serious hazard for workers resulting in permanent injury or wrongful death. Though occupational fatality rates have declined since the establishment of OSHA, there is some evidence that safety conditions are in decline. According to data collected from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) there are about 13 deaths per day caused by work-accidents.

Greater workplace danger can put additional minorities and immigrants at a greater risk.
If you or someone you love was injured in a workplace accident, it is critical to involve an experienced advocate as soon as possible. Independent and OSHA investigations can be critical to proving negligence in a case involving workplace injury.
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Factory workers have faced struggles for a safe workplace for generations. Early abysmal conditions in factories highlighted in works like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle led to the rise of unions and to the passage of many workplace safety laws in the United States. Yet, even today, factory workers still continue to work in unsafe conditions, in old and dangerous buildings, doing repetitive tasks that put stress on their joints and the soft tissues of their bodies, year in and year out.

Our Boston work injury attorneys know that there is little oversight of factory conditions due to understaffing of OSHA workers that results in inspections of workplaces being far too infrequent. While conditions are better in the United States than in other parts of the world, conditions are still far from optimal and workers are still at risk of being hurt or killed on the job. More needs to be done to make factories safe and one MIT Political Science Professor has offered some suggestions on what could be done to improve conditions.

Improving Conditions for Workers in Factories

According to MIT’s website, MIT political scientist Richard Locke has studied the question of factory safety issues for more than a decade. Locke has worked with a team of researchers, which collected information from companies worldwide and has explored different options for improving workplace safety conditions.

Locke had long believed that the best solution would involve multi-national firms auditing factories where suppliers worked to produce goods. These audits would focus on safety violations and the corporations could threaten to withhold business from suppliers that did not maintain safe factory conditions.

Unfortunately, Locke now believes that private oversight and the free market system may not be enough to keep workers safe. Locke cites dangerous conditions, excessive hours, poor wages and child labor as major concerns for many factories. While some of these problems aren’t major issues in the United States due to tough child labor laws and reasonably effective enforcement of wage and hour laws, other problems are serious concerns locally including the risk of dangerous conditions. All of these problems are major issues throughout the world, however, and lives are being lost as the recent factory collapse in Bangladesh so tragically illustrated.

Now, Locke believes that the best and perhaps only way to combat these problems is for governments to protect certain fundamental rights including the freedom to bargain collectively. Locke suggests that the best solution may be to consider factories as part of a global supply chain and to facilitate active collaboration between the private sector, states and nongovernmental organizations to set and maintain standards for acceptable working conditions that will help to protect workers.

In the United States, of course, we already have government oversight. However, it is questionable whether that oversight is effective in light of the recent AFL-CIO report indicating that workplace inspections are rare and that fines are too low to actually encourage employers to follow safety rules.

If Locke’s position is correct and the only fix for workers is a partnership between the private sector and government, then his advice is not just important for people in countries like Bangladesh but is also important here in the United States where we have a long way to go yet to make factories as safe as possible for employees.
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In the United States, the goal is to be a society where people of all races are treated equally and enjoy equal protections under the law. Unfortunately, this is too often not the reality. Recent data shows that there is a significantly higher rate of workplace deaths among Hispanics and African Americans as compared to people of other races. While this most recent report confirms this fact, this is not new information and the statistics for years have shown that minority employees have a higher death rate on the job.

Our Boston work injury attorneys know that employers have an obligation to all employees, regardless of race, color, religion, class or national origin. Every employee deserves a safe workplace and it is the job of employers to provide the protections that are necessary to reduce the number of deaths on the job.

African Americans and Latinos More Likely to Die At Work

According to ABC News, a recent report indicated that Hispanics make up approximately 15 percent of the total labor market in the United States. However, a total of 20 percent of workplace fatalities involve Hispanics, which means that a disproportionate number of Hispanics in the labor market are suffering fatal work injuries. In fact, Hispanics have the highest rate of workplace deaths of all workers.

The number of Hispanics who are killed as a result of workplace injuries also seems to be growing. In 2011, for example, there was a three percent increase in the number of Latino workers who were killed on he job as compared with the prior year. This increase occurred at a time when the overall rate of workplace fatalities has been on a steady decline from a record 6,600 deaths in 1994.

In 2011, 729 of the 4,600 workers killed on the job were Latino workers. This was 22 more deaths than the 707 Latino workers who were killed in 2010. This was the first increase in the number of Hispanic workers killed on the job since 2006. African Americans also saw an increase in the number of on-the-job injuries.

While the number of deaths among both African and American Latino workers rose from 2010 to 2011, the number of fatalities among white workers declined by three percent. This makes the discrepancy between the number of white workers killed on the job and the number of workers of other races killed on the job even larger since the number of deaths among whites has declined while the number of deaths among African Americans and Latinos continues to rise.

Many of the Latino workers who were killed were foreign born workers and most were from Mexico. An estimated 500 of the 729 Latino workers were said to be foreign-born. These workers may not have enjoyed the full protections of the U.S. worker safety laws, especially if some of the workers were low-wage undocumented workers. Employers tend to take advantage of the fact that undocumented immigrants may not be able to pursue workplace safety claims against them, which is one of the reasons why people are calling for immigration reform. It is likely also one of the reasons why more Hispanic workers died as a result of workplace injuries than white workers did over the course of the year.

Unfortunately, these figures are nothing new; Latinos have had a higher workplace fatality rate for the past 15 years. Something needs to change and employers need to start taking the rights of all workers of all races much more seriously.
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In this second of our two-part series detailing worker deaths and injuries in Massachusetts, our Boston workers’ compensation attorneys want to focus on the specific dangers, as well as what kinds of measures might be implemented to curb future tragedies.

The report, Dying for Work in Massachusetts, reveals that of the 32 worker deaths reported last year, falls accounted for a huge portion – particularly in the construction industry.

One of those described was a a 49-year-old painter from Lowell. He had hoisted a 2.5-gallon bucket of paint as he stood two stories above the ground on a ladder. The ladder shifted. He plummeted 20 feet to the ground and died.

Falls accounted for six worker deaths in Massachusetts last year, and since 2008, they have been the cause of more than half of all construction industry injuries and deaths.

Cancer was another major workplace danger, with firefighters in particular at risk. The carcinogens released from toxic, burning material undoubtedly contributed. We are also continuing to see diagnoses handed down for mesothelioma, resulting from asbestos exposure suffered years ago by shipfitters, electricians, auto manufacturers, construction crews and others.

Drowning and/or being lost at sea continues to be a big problem in Massachusetts, as the area relies so heavily on the fishing and marine industry. This resulted in four deaths last year.

Tree care also is an extremely dangerous occupation, resulting in three deaths in 2012. One of those was the owner of a Christmas tree fall, who was killed while taking down a maple tree on his own property. The tree reportedly fell the wrong way at the base, and he was unable to escape the impact. Often, the cause of arbor-related deaths are falls, but dangerous or malfunctioning equipment has also been a significant concern for those in this industry.

One occupation for which we saw a sudden spike in danger was school crossing guard. The report indicated that over the last four years, two Massachusetts school crossing guards have been killed and nine others injured, after being struck by vehicles. Part of the problem is that crosswalks reportedly aren’t well-maintained, but also, motorists have a general disregard for the authority of these individuals carrying out this essential function to ensure our children come home safely.

The bigger problem, which could be applied to all workplaces, is that the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration, is underfunded and understaffed and is bound by an outdated law that slows their findings and caps their penalties.

For example, the report indicates that if each regional OSHA were to inspect every workplace in its district, it would take 140 years – just in Massachusetts.

What’s more, the average fine for employers whose negligence resulted in worker death was just $9,500.

Out of those 32 worker deaths, just five of those investigations have thus far been closed with a penalty. All except one of those resulted in a fine that was $12,000 or less.

Many workplaces calculate that it’s cheaper to pay the fines resulting from worker injuries or deaths than to comply with appropriate safety standards to prevent these scenarios from happening in the first place.

Sadly, they’re right.
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