USA: Latino workers have highest workplace fatality rate amid lack of safety protections; incl. co comments
Summary
Date Reported: 26 Apr 2024
Location: United States of America
Companies
Friends Masonry Construction - Other Value Chain Entity , Old North State Masonry - Other Value Chain EntityAffected
Total individuals affected: Number unknown
Migrant & immigrant workers: ( 1 - Honduras , Construction , Men , Undocumented migrants )Issues
Occupational Health & SafetyResponse
Response sought: Yes, by Journalist
Action taken: After investigating the scaffold collapse, the North Carolina Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Division fined two companies involved. Friends Masonry Construction declined to comment to journalists. Old North State Masonry also did not respond to the journalist's requests for comment.
Source type: News outlet
“With Few Workplace Safety Protections, Latino Worker Deaths Are Surging”
… Latino workers today have the highest workplace fatality rate: The number of on-the-job deaths has declined over time for white people, and slightly increased for Black people over the past few years, but fatalities for Latino workers continue to rise sharply…
Latino workers predominate in low-wage, risky jobs: in construction, meat processing, landscaping, farmwork and warehousing. …
Friends Masonry Construction was fined for failing to inspect the equipment before the work…
Felipe Estrada Calzada, a company official, declined to discuss the incident.
Old North State Masonry was fined for not inspecting the equipment…
So, too, some are teens working in dangerous jobs, like Duvan Tomas Perez, a 16-year-old from a rural Guatemalan village, who died last July, while working on the regular cleaning crew in a Mar-Jac Poultry plant…
…Attorney Jim Reeves of Biloxi, Miss., who has filed a lawsuit against Mar-Jac and Ōnin Staffing on behalf of the youth’s family…
Mar-Jac officials did not respond to requests for comment, but the company issued a statement in July 2023, explaining that it uses “staffing companies” to hire workers due to “an unprecedentedly tight labor market” and relies on them to verify that their hiring is legal…
Ōnin Staffing did not respond to requests for comment….