The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Workplace deaths at 8-year high
A newly released study on workplace deaths and injuries in Connecticut found the number of people who lost their lives to work injuries in 2018 was higher than any year since 2010, according to the state Department of Labor .
A total of 48 people in the state lost their lives to work-related injuries in 2018, up from 35 in the previous year. It is also 23 percent higher than the average annual number of workplace deaths in Connecticut over a 26-year period between 1992 and 2018, according to the data.
During the period between 2014 and 2018, 190 lives were lost to workplace injuries, according to state Labor Department data.
Connecticut’s fatal injury rate was 2.8 deaths per 100,000 fulltime equivalent workers. The national fatal injury rate in 2018 was 3.5 deaths per 100,000 fulltime equivalent workers.
The two sectors with the highest fatal injury rates in Connecticut during 2018 were the construction industry, with 10.9 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, and 10.2 per 100,000 in the transportation and utilities sector.
Fear a factor
Two labor union leaders whose jobs are focused on safety said the current climate doesn’t lend itself to workers reporting potential
safety risks and advocating for themselves with employers if they do get hurt.
“The current climate, whether it’s political or economic, doesn’t lend itself to workers speaking up,” said Kyle Zimmer, director of health and safety for Local 478 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which represents workers on construction projects.
Steve Schrag, safety director for the Service Employees International Union, Local 511, said workers are afraid to report workplace safety violations to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Schrag said many workers don’t feel OSHA officials will impose severeenough penalties to make employers become more safety conscious.
“Employers don’t fear what is going to happen if OSHA gets brought in,” he said. “That’s where the value of being in a union comes in. If don’t belong to a union, you don’t have a voice.”
Zimmer said “OSHA does a good job with the resources that it has.”
David Cadden, a professor emeritus at Quinnipiac University’s School of Business, said “government organizations designed to promote safety are being cut back” by the Trump administration.
“The movement of (getting) rid of highly restrictive regulations is a factor here, Cadden said. “Some of them may be annoying, but they keep people safe.”
Zimmer said creating a safer workplace starts with workers on job sites “taking their personal safety seriously.”
“That mindset, that the individual worker’s safety is ultimately up to them, is so important,” he said. “They have to make safety their first priority. It can’t be overlooked.”
That focus on safety even extends to before a construction worker steps on the job site, according Zimmer. Studies have shown workers in that trade are prone to drug addiction issues and suicide, he said.
Schrag said getting the complete picture of workplace safety can be difficult.
Each year, he compiles a list of the names of Connecticut workers killed on the job to be read on April 28, Workers Memorial Day. In some cases, that has meant that Schrag has had to file Freedom of Information Act requests.
Further, the data used in the state’s Labor Department report on employee safety and workplace death doesn’t include occupational illness, he said. Occupational
illnesses are health issues that come about as a result of a problems with the environment in which one works.
Using workers’ compensation documents, Schrag said he found that 20 factory workers at Electric Boat in Groton had filed claims in 2018 in which they claimed they had developed lung cancer because of air quality conditions at the shipyard.
Across Connecticut, there were 13 people killed by workplace injuries during 2018 in the construction field, which represents 27.1 percent of the overall total for the year. Another 12 Connecticut workers who died from workplace injuries in 2018 came from a sector that included administration and support, as well as waste management and remediation services.
Of the 48 workplace deaths in 2018, 41, or about 85 percent, of those who died were men. Nationally, 92 percent of the workrelated deaths in 2018 were men.
Transportation incidents involving workers claimed 19 lives in Connecticut, which represents 40 percent of the overall total.
There were 5,250 fatal work injuries recorded in the United States in 2018, a 2 percent increase from the 5,147 in 2017, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in December.
A 2016 Labor Department publication reported at that time that Connecticut averaged “39 work-related fatalities annually with a high of 57 in 1998.”
Further, it reported; “Nine states recorded numbers lower than Connecticut, with the lowest number of 8 in Vermont. Nationally, four states accounted for 27 percent of deaths: Texas with 524, California 334, Florida 221, and New York with 203.”