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Immigrant Worker Deaths on the Job Can be Prevented |
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Back in August, we told you about a government report showing that the deaths of immigrant workers on the job are rising. Earlier, the AFL-CIO’s 2005 study, Immigrant Workers at Risk found immigrant workers are at far greater risk of being killed or injured on the job than native-born workers.
Now comes a report from the Chicago Tribune’s Stephen Franklin and Darnell Little, which shows the top cause of death on the job for foreign-born workers is homicide, and most victims are clerks at gasoline stations and food stores and cab drivers.
Most of the deaths could have been prevented, the Tribune article says:
A Tribune analysis shows that in 2005, when foreign-born workers made up 15 percent of the nation’s workforce, 188 were murdered on the job, accounting for more than a third of the 564 workplace homicides, the highest ratio since the government began keeping track in 1992.
Much of this loss of life can be avoided with measures that are both well-known and not costly, experts say. But protecting cab drivers and store clerks hasn’t been as big a priority as saving lives on the factory floor, they add.
Between 1992 and 2005, the latest year for which statistics are available, 3,040 foreign-born workers were murdered on the job, according to government figures. Most of the victims were Mexicans, but the workplace homicide rates were the highest among immigrants from India, Cuba, Korea and Vietnam.
Why hasn’t something been done to protect these workers? You guessed it: Employer opposition. Here’s how Franklin and Little describe it:
Amid opposition from the retail industry, which complained about the potential paperwork and governmental intrusion, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) in the 1990s mulled a proposed regulation that applied to late-night workers at retail stores and cabs. Finally, the regulatory agency came up with a voluntary guideline in 1998 for late-night stores.
In two of the three states with regulations for retail stores, industry groups challenged the laws. They lost their challenges in Florida, and a court battle over a 2004 law in New Mexico is not yet resolved. Washington is the other state with a law meant to protect retail store workers.
“If it [the law] were necessary, every state would have it,” says Ruben Baca, of the New Mexico Petroleum Marketers Association, which is fighting the 2004 law. “There are violent people out there, and what they need to do is put violent people away.”
Three years after the federal guidelines took effect, the Department of Labor’s inspector general said that OSHA did not know whether businesses were following them or even the figures on the level of violence in the workplaces.
But this is not just an immigrant problem. As Jordan Barab points out:
In addition to being the leading cause of death for foreign born workers, workplace homicide has continuously been the second or third leading cause of workplace death for all workers nationwide. There’s a myth that nothing can be done about it, and there’s an assumption that even if something can be done about it, it’s either not OSHA’s job or there’s no way, given its current resources, that OSHA can do anything about it.
It’s an assumption that we need to change. Good work was done on the issue in the 1990s, and regardless of resistance from the retail industry associations, it’s work that needs to be done again if OSHA is going to be serious about its mission to make all workplaces safer, whether you’re working on a drill press, digging trench, building a house — or slinging hot dogs or driving a taxi.
Click here to find out more about safety and health at work and here to visit the AFL-CIO’s Safety and Health Toolbox for materials you can use to make your voice heard about safe jobs (en Español).
Download the annual AFL-CIO Death on the Job report here.
For the latest on job safety news, visit Confined Space.
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