Posted on 09/08/2001 7:15:40 PM PDT by lewislynn
Texas construction workers dying in record numbers
Toll is highest among Hispanic laborers, who fill riskiest jobs, lack training
09/09/2001
By KATHERINE YUNG / The Dallas Morning News
First of two parts
Nearly three stories above a gray concrete floor, Ponciano Diosdado stepped gingerly onto a narrow steel beam to do some welding on a new office building going up in southwest Austin.
The beam began to rock, sending Mr. Diosdado scrambling for safety. He hopped onto another only to have it twist away, plunging the 34-year-old construction worker to the pavement below.
"This isn't possible. It's never happened. It's like he is still working there," says his bewildered wife, Blanca Rangel de Diosdado.
But it was all too real.
Her husband, who crossed last January into Texas to work, died in that early-June fall.
And now, 850 miles away in Salamanca, Mexico, Mrs. Diosdado and her three children live on insurance benefits and wonder what went wrong.
Mr. Diosdado's death – officially blamed on inadequate training – is part of the grim underside of Texas' five-year building boom.
Construction workers across the state – a majority of them Hispanic – are dying in numbers and at rates higher than at any time since comparable bookkeeping began a decade ago.
In sharp contrast to a decline nationally, fatalities set a record last year, jumping 26 percent from 1999 and 5.6 percent ahead of the 1998 peak.
The death rate per 100,000 workers, which takes work volume into account, isn't yet known but almost certainly matched or exceeded the record set in 1998.
That would make Texas' rate about 50 percent higher than the national rate.
The industry is by far the state's riskiest, employing just 6 percent of the workforce but accounting for 26 percent of on-the-job deaths.
Safety regulators and industry officials alike say they are disturbed by the surge in fatalities. The worsening pattern is "atrocious," said John Miles Jr., the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration's top official for Texas and three surrounding states.
Texas members of the Associated General Contractors, one of the nation's largest building trade organizations, have launched efforts to improve safety. Although some have had notable success, overall, "we're not doing a good job in Texas," says Mike Allen, a professional safety trainer from Midland employed by the group.
A Dallas Morning News examination of the industry's safety record shows that the problem's roots are complex and require long-term solutions. Among the findings:
• Most deaths are scattered among the thousands of small contractors that dominate the industry. These companies aren't keeping up with an inexperienced, fast-changing workforce, failing to train newcomers adequately on unfamiliar equipment and on how to navigate busy work sites safely.
• More than half of the victims are Hispanics. Many of them are undocumented immigrants like Mr. Diosdado who know little or no English. Yet this group often performs the most dangerous tasks.
• OSHA, by design, is performing almost a third fewer safety inspections than a decade ago – and most of those are focused on larger companies, which generally have better safety records than the smaller contractors. Texas relies entirely on 158 federal agents to police thousands of companies and projects – unlike 23 states that run and partly finance their own work-safety programs.
• Employers aren't always to blame. About half of all deaths are caused by workers taking foolhardy risks or being careless – behavior that's hard to anticipate and harder to change.
The wave of deaths is already changing the landscape in the far-flung and highly entrepreneurial $32 billion-a-year industry.
State legislation to expand worker rights has been proposed. Lawsuits that could put some firms out of business are pending. Unions are capitalizing on the issue to recruit members, and big companies are leaning on their subcontractors to give workers better protective gear and safety training.
Since more than half of those killed are Hispanic, job safety has also become an issue for Mexican and American diplomats trying to define the rights of about 3 million Mexican immigrants now in the United States illegally.
Each serious construction accident affects 65 people, from co-workers and family members to lawyers and insurance managers, says Mr. Allen, the safety trainer.
A single death can cost a contractor $900,000 to $1 million, estimates David Bilbo, a professor of construction science at Texas A&M University.
Army of laborers
Increasingly, Texas relies on the muscle of Hispanic men and women to put up, tear down, repair or modernize everything from its office buildings to its entertainment palaces, its homes to its highways.
Hispanics make up a third of the state's population but constitute 46 percent of the industry's workforce, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates. The percentage of Hispanic construction workers is likely to be even higher because many undocumented immigrants are not included in these calculations.
For all the talk of a high-tech New Economy, the state "would fall on its face" without that army of laborers and roofers, pipe layers and drywall installers, Dr. Bilbo says.
Yet Hispanic construction workers are dying at rates 10 percent to 20 percent higher than their co-workers.
One reason is that construction is a magnet for immigrants – legal or illegal – from Mexico and Central America. And like waves of Italians, Irishmen and Germans before them, these newly arrived Latinos often get the dirty jobs no one else wants.
"There has always been a hierarchy," says Immanuel Ness, an assistant professor at New York's Brooklyn College who specializes in the politics of labor. Or, as Dr. Bilbo puts it: "You won't find too many Anglos today digging a foundation."
Danger and opportunity
Risky jobs plus inexperience, reluctance to question bosses' orders and language gaps are a deadly mix for industry newcomers.
Still, the work has appeal. No formal education or resume is required. No technical skill, no knowledge of English. The money isn't bad. Undocumented immigrants often get paid $7 an hour or more, no questions asked, for digging trenches or mixing concrete – well above the $5.15 U.S. minimum wage and far more than they earned back home.
Although Texas' building binge has slowed lately, companies still employ plenty of workers who never picked up a hammer before taking their current jobs.
Many workers receive instruction only as they encounter difficulty – sometimes from inexperienced supervisors.
Often, training "is not being communicated to [workers] in a manner that they can understand," says John Matias, a job-safety expert at Engineering Safety Consultants in Dallas. Immigrants may say or nod "yes" to instructions just to please their English-speaking bosses, he says
In 1989, Jose Guadalupe Davila left his father's ranch in Nuevo Leon and made his way to the United States to join three cousins. The four found a niche in North Texas as roofers, sharing expenses and about $900 to $1,000 a week in earnings. Mr. Davila saved enough money to buy a truck.
Then, two years ago, the four got a job with JCP II Contracting roofing a new apartment complex in Plano. The one cousin able to speak English twice asked for rope to use as safety lines on the sharply sloped roofs but says he was ignored, according to a sworn statement he made later. So the men picked up odd pieces of rope and nailed them to rooftops to use as hand-holds, the statement says.
One December morning, Mr. Davila, carrying a roll of black felt across a rooftop, slipped and fell 25 feet to the ground. He died a month later without ever leaving Columbia Medical Center in Plano.
Mr. Davila's death prompted OSHA to visit the construction site, but by then the agency couldn't find any employees of JCP II there, so no formal actions were taken. Company officials could not be located for comment, and its lawyer did not return telephone calls. The firm settled a lawsuit brought by Mr. Davila's father for $1 million, his attorney says.
Declining inspections
Texas construction sites today undergo far fewer inspections than a decade ago. Last year, OSHA conducted 2,013 inspections in the state's construction industry, down 31 percent from 1990. Commercial building alone in the same period rose 24 percent.
The cutback reflects a "marked" philosophical change, says Mr. Miles, the OSHA administrator. The agency now wants quality over numbers, he says.
In 1990, for example, it gave out 5,000 citations to companies that failed to hang safety posters at their facilities. Today, citations like that are rare.
The average time spent on each case is up by a third. The agency also is levying stiffer penalties, which suggests it is citing more serious offenses.
But Texas OSHA officials had little choice but to reduce the number of inspections. Their resources have not kept pace with the state's building boom. The agency's Texas budget, adjusted for inflation, has increased 7 percent in a decade. That's less than half the rate of increase in OSHA's national spending.
The number of inspectors statewide – 158 – is about the same as in 1992.
And despite the record construction-related death rate, the agency's spending in the state isn't expected to grow at all in the coming fiscal year. Mr. Miles, who started out as an inspector in Oklahoma almost 30 years ago, defends the shift in strategy. Given that "there's no way you can be on every job site," he says, OSHA needs to make sure cases it does tackle will stand up in court, if necessary.
Critics say that argument is a red herring. "Nobody's enforcing the OSHA laws," says Danny Tilley, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO's Texas Building and Construction Trades Council.
He and others liken the situation to speed limits, which they say become meaningless if police don't enforce them.
California's rate lower
There's support for that argument. California performed almost three times more inspections over the last decade, and its 1999 death rate in construction – 10.7 per 100,000 workers, was about a third lower than Texas' 15.9.
Unlike Texas, California doesn't rely solely on the federal agency. It adds state dollars to its share of federal funds and runs its own safety program. The two states received nearly the same federal funding in fiscal year 2000, but California chipped in an additional $27 million for such things as its own workplace standards and research capabilities. California's total spending was $47 million, compared with Texas' $19 million.
Determining what caused an accident is sometimes the easy part, compared with assessing blame.
Major construction firms routinely rely on an array of subcontractors to do most of the work on their projects. But thin legal lines separate the responsibilities of contractors from those of subcontractors. In a serious or fatal accident, it can be unclear whether the general contractor, a subcontractor, or no one at all, has the obligation to pay costly insurance benefits or damages.
Two years ago, Gerardo Gonsalez suffered a broken collarbone and hip and other injuries when a 6-foot-tall rock wall collapsed on him and some co-workers at an El Paso new-home project. The 32-year-old now lives with nagging pain and must walk with a cane.
The wall collapsed because the men dug under it, undermining an already weak footing. But why did they dig there?
Mr. Gonsalez says his boss, Jose Torres, told him to. Mr. Torres says he was following instructions from Saratoga Homes, the general contractor, even though he had concerns.
Saratoga says it told Mr. Torres no such thing – he and Mr. Gonsalez didn't even work for the company. Mr. Torres was to build rock walls at a rate of $26.50 per "perch," or 161/2-foot-long section, but was an independent contractor, Saratoga says. How he did it was his call.
The dispute matters to Mr. Gonsalez. He can't collect benefits from Saratoga's insurance, and Mr. Torres has no coverage. OSHA cited Saratoga for not providing hard hats to workers and not ensuring the stability of structures on the site. The company paid a $1,000 fine on the first citation, but the second was dismissed on appeal. Mr. Torres was also cited for two violations. Both were dismissed.
Now Mr. Gonsalez is suing Saratoga, demanding it pay his injury bills. The trial is set for October in El Paso.
Big companies on guard
At the new two-story home of the National Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame under construction in Fort Worth, a few things stand out. A guardrail encircles the top, ladders and guardrails dot the scaffolding, and a temporary wooden deck rises from the first floor to collect large metal forms dropped from above after their use.
"You don't want anyone to get hurt," explains John Jackson, a superintendent for Linbeck Construction, surveying the scene. "It just makes good business sense."
Over the last decade, many big Texas construction companies have come to that conclusion: Accidents carry a price, including escalating insurance premiums, legal bills and administrative costs and lower productivity. Safety equipment and employee training more than pay off.
The result: Construction is getting less dangerous at some of the state's largest companies. A recent OSHA study in Texas and other states in the Southwest found that only 11 percent of companies with an on-the-job death employed 100 or more employees. Fifty-two percent had 10 or fewer.
Large firms can afford safety officers and special training, experts say. They can be choosier about whom they employ. Linbeck, for example, warns employees who break safety rules once and fires repeat offenders.
Major outfits are most likely to buy the latest safety technology, too, such as improved safety harnesses, drills that suck lung-choking silica into vacuum bags and computers that prevent workers from tipping over cranes.
And now, many are attacking the language barrier.
Late one July afternoon, 15 men and one woman settle into a small classroom at the Dallas office of the Associated General Contractors of America. Hot and dusty after a day outdoors in near-100-degree heat, they break into a chorus of "ahs" and "ees," following instructor Irene Zucker.
"Spanish vowels are rarely silent," she reminds them.
Most are supervisors at Matrix Interior Construction Inc., a Carrollton framing, drywall and acoustical tile company. To communicate with their Hispanic workers, they have had to draw diagrams, demonstrate their message or find a bilingual co-worker to translate.
After five weeks of lessons, foreman Mark Rogers now can use Spanish to tell his crews, who are 90 percent Hispanic, to put on safety harnesses. He carries around a booklet of English-Spanish translations as a backstop. The crews "are kind of having fun," too, he says, sometimes interrupting in midsentence to correct his pronunciation.
But at thousands of small companies, safety concerns still lag, experts say. "A guy will become a construction contractor overnight," says James Knorpp, a safety consultant and former head of OSHA's Fort Worth office. "These guys know nothing about compliance with regulations."
Small firms miss out
Mr. Miles, OSHA's top administrator for Texas and the rest of the Southwest, concedes that small employers are "a group we never get to." And statistics show that deaths don't fit any simple pattern – in the last decade, only 59 companies had more than one fatality and just five had more than three.
To make matters worse, small firms usually miss out on the industry's voluntary training programs. Of the companies that had fatal accidents in the last decade, 75 percent weren't members of leading trade groups.
"What we find in our safety forums is that we are basically preaching to the choir," says Jaime Vega, who oversees workforce development issues for the North Texas chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors.
On smaller projects and non-commercial ones, "there's not enough safety training being done," says Jessy Cole, safety director at Austin Commercial, one of the state's largest construction companies. "The industry has to understand that without workers, we can't build a job."
So this summer, the ABC began free, two-hour safety courses in Spanish at large work sites around North Texas after discovering that many Hispanic workers lacked transportation to attend central classes. The courses are aimed at nonmembers. Attendance has reached 20 to 40 workers a day.
A little more knowledge might have saved the life of Ismael Salgado.
The 23-year-old was helping build a school in El Paso when his boss ordered him to remove temporary bracing from a wall so the ceiling could be installed.
The 7,300-pound wall collapsed, crushing him to death.
"What happened to my son should not have happened," says Juan Perez, Mr. Salgado's father. His suit against the general contractor and two other companies involved in the project was settled this summer for an undisclosed amount.
An investigation showed that the wall had been improperly built.
OSHA cited six contractors at the site for problems ranging from not having a competent person inspect the project often enough to the lack of a written hazard warning program.
Mr. Salgado's chances of anticipating disaster on his own had been slim. He had little experience in construction and even less with the wall that killed him.
Law already exists to prevent false identity, but government officials refuse to enforce them. But, in this little horror film the author wants us to believe new laws need to be written to control those nasty people who don't train their employees. Start at the border, with the border control people, and get them to enforce that law.
Move then to state, county and city officials who fail to enforce a horde of laws that would, if enforced, keep these people out of the hiring lines.
I don't know if they had a media outcry. Wonder why. They were all white, but I doubt if that is the reason.
As if hanging safety posters would have prevented these deaths...
Another facet of the "grim underside of Texas' five-year building boom" is the quality - or rather, the lack thereof - of the buildings these guys are putting up.
I wouldn't buy one of the new houses in Harris or Fort Bend counties on a bet.
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