Report: 2018 deadliest year for CT workers since 2010

More Connecticut workers died on the job in 2018 than in any year since 2010, according to a new report released Friday by the AFL-CIO labor federation.

The 48 Connecticut workers who lost their lives were among the 5,250 workers killed nationwide while on the job in 2018, the most recent year for which data was available. There also were 37,200 Connecticut workers who suffered injuries and/or illnesses related to their jobs in 2018.

“The ‘Death on the Job’ report confirms that the safety and well-being of Connecticut’s workers are not being taken seriously enough,” said Sal Luciano, president of Connecticut AFL-CIO. “Sadly, I expect the numbers to increase next year as we take into account the lives lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The job fatality rate in Connecticut for 2018 was 2.8 per 100,000 workers. That’s slightly better than the national rate of 3.5 per 100,000 workers killed on the job that year.

But Connecticut had a slightly higher rate of workplace injuries and illnesses — 3.2 per 100,000 workers — than the nation as a whole. Nationally, job-related injuries and illnesses were suffered at a rate of 2.8 per 100,000 workers.

Luciano said overall, “Connecticut is at about the middle of the pack in terms of worker safety,” compared to other states.

“We’re not great and we’re not horrible,” he said. “At least we supplement the number of investigators that

OSHA has here with some of our own. Texas has no state investigators.”

Connecticut has nearly 1.7 million workers and more than 120,000 work establishments, but there are only 21 inspectors with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration to oversee workplace safety, according to AFL-CIO officials.

That means it would take inspectors in Connecticut 141 years to inspect each workplace just once. And the median penalty assessed per

OSHA fatality investigation in fiscal 2019 was less than $4,000, Luciano said.

“While no amount of money can ever replace the value of a lost human life, the fact that corporate billionaires are being fined less than $4,000 for the fatality of a worker is abysmal,” he said. “For a lot of employers, that’s just the cost of doing business.”

Luciano said state lawmakers need to toughen protections for whistleblowers who report employers trying to get around safety rules.

Officials with the Hartfordbased Connecticut Business & Industry Association, the state’s largest group representing employers, were not immediately available for comment Friday regarding the AFL-CIO report.

Luciano said the global pandemic will only exacerbate workplace health and safety issues going forward, particularly for front-line workers.

“We call them heroes, but we treat them like zeros,” he said.

As an example, he cited the situation at Backus Hospital in Norwich, where nurses are scheduled to go on strike early next week. One of the issues the nurses union has with the hospital, which is part of Hartford Healthcare, is a lack of adequate personal protective equipment for them.

Donna Handley, president of Backus Hospital, said in a letter to the southeastern Connecticut community that the nurses’ decision to strike “is deeply disappointing — especially now.”

“We have worked tirelessly to prevent this from happening,” Handley said. “While other health care employers have laid off or furloughed nurses and other staff, throughout the pandemic Backus Hospital was able to retain jobs and provide staff with additional paid time off and other support including housing and a colleague assistance fund. I pledge that Backus Hospital will continue to be safe, ready and prepared to care for you. No matter what happens, Backus Hospital will remain open and all of our world-class programs and services will remain accessible to everyone in the community.”

In statement separate from that letter, the hospital executive said “personal protective equipment is — and has been — available to staff and patients 100 percent of the time.”

“We need to be clear that any statement to the contrary is inaccurate,” she said.

The Connecticut AFL-CIO is a federation of hundreds of local labor unions representing more than 220,000 members in both the private and public sectors as well as in the building trades.