Last week, the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (“COSH”) released its annual “Dirty Dozen” report on the companies with the highest workplace dangers in the country.
Read the 48-page 2018 study here, entitled “The Dirty Dozen 2018: Employers Who Put Workers and Communities at Risk.”
From Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, co-executive director of COSH:
“It’s heartbreaking to see workers lose their lives when we know these tragedies could have been prevented. Time and again, employers are warned about unsafe conditions. When companies fail to correct safety hazards, it is workers who pay the ultimate price.”
Workers Killed on the Job: Shocking Truth about Employers
For those who represent workers who are fatally hurt and killed on the job here in Indiana or Illinois, it’s understood that there is absolutely no correlation between the financial success of the employer and the risks facing the employee that have resulted in his or her death. Some of the most profitable organizations in our area can be responsible for unsafe working conditions that have resulted in the death of a worker here.
It is not the case that it is always companies or employers who are strapped for cash who have fatal employee accidents or workplace deaths at their job sites. Sometimes, this is true.
However, it is often the case that prosperous and profitable concerns are the employers who fail their workers with fatal workplace accidents as a result.
The Dirty Dozen List
Consider the following companies who achieved recognition on this year’s Dirty Dozen list, all of whom are wildly profitable corporations operating on a national or global level:
- Amazon
- Case Farms
- Dine Brands Global, Inc. (IHOP and Applebee’s)
- JK Excavating
- Lowe’s Home Improvement
- Lynnway Auto Auction
- New York and Atlantic Railway
- Patterson UTI Energy
- Sarbanand Farms
- Tesla Motors
- Verla International
- Waste Management
The Dirty Dozen are companies responsible for preventable accidents of workers and employees on their job sites. COSH compiled their report after gathering data from health and safety activists around the country. In order to be considered for the distinction, the companies had to have shown accidents involving (1) severity of injuries to workers; (2) exposure to unnecessary and preventable risk; (3) repeat citations by relevant state and federal authorities; and (4) activity by workers to improve their health and safety conditions.
In other words, they had to have had both (a) serious fatalities as well as (b) a history of citations from safety regulators warning them of risks and dangers to their workers.
From the Dirty Dozen report:
All these deaths were preventable. These workers would still be alive if their employers had followed through and corrected the safety hazards identified in citations issued by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Dirty Dozen Report Warns of Indiana and Illinois Worker Deaths
One of the first examples of these preventable fatal worker deaths appears on page 11 of the report, where Amazon, Inc. is considered as one of the 12 most dangerous companies to work for in the United States.
From the Dirty Dozen Report, page 11, discussing Amazon:
Six days later, on September 23, Phillip Terry, 59, was killed when his head was crushed by a forklift at an Amazon warehouse in Plainfield, Indiana.
Four weeks later, on October 23, Karla Kay Arnold, 50, died from multiple injuries after she was hit by a sports utility vehicle in the parking lot of an Amazon warehouse in Monee, Illinois.
The tragic deaths of Mr. Terry and Ms. Arnold are not the only preventable worker fatalities in our part of the country, of course. Their fatal job-site accidents are a warning to all of us in Indiana and Illinois that this national report is important for all of us to read and consider.
Companies continue to value revenue over worker safety. There are safety guidelines and legal regulations in place. They are simply not being followed. See, e.g., Profits Over People: Corporate Greed in the News.
More workers are dying on the job in preventable accidents. COSH warns us that according to research reports from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there has been a 7% increase in workplace deaths in reporting year 2016, and an increase of 12% over the five-year time span going back to 2012.
The dangers facing workers in Indiana and Illinois are real: there is a growing risk of being killed while on the job and everyone needs to be aware of this risk.
Workers and employees need to be extremely careful during their workday – especially since statistics (like this report) reveal that companies are not doing their job of keeping their employees safe from harm under known safety standards and guidelines.
In our next post, we’ll discuss the reasons why these tragedies continue to occur, especially on the work sites of some of the most prosperous and profitable employers in the country. Please share this warning with your loved ones and colleagues as they go about their workday. Let’s be careful out there!
