NYT: Are Working Conditions Really Getting Less Dangerous for Hispanic Laborers?

[Omaha Steve]

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/are-working-conditions-really-getting-less-dangerous-for-hispanic-laborers/

August 27, 2010, 12:57 pm

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

In recent years, one of the most discomforting work force trends was that Hispanics suffered a considerably higher fatality rate from workplace injuries than did workers overall. In its annual census of fatal workplace injuries for 2006, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the fatality rate for Hispanics was 30 percent higher than for the overall work force.

“Those numbers were very embarrassing,” said Peg Seminario, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s director of safety and health. “They were surprisingly high. They were so bad nobody could ignore them.”

Those statistics alarmed Hispanic groups, prompting many to complain that Hispanic immigrants, especially undocumented ones, were often steered into dangerous jobs, like roofing and demolition. There were further complaints that Hispanic workers were too often given little safety training, which was all the more important considering that many did not speak or read English.

Last week there was some good news when the B.L.S. released its annual census of workplace fatalities — it reported a 17 percent drop in fatal workplace injuries in 2009 compared with the previous year. (Some of that was of course due to the decline in employment and the 6 percent drop in total hours worked.)

That report contained one largely overlooked piece of good news. The gap in the fatality rate between Hispanic workers and the overall work force had apparently narrowed. According to the B.L.S., the fatality rate for Hispanic workers was 3.7 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers in 2009, down from 5.3 per 100,000 in 2006. That’s a happy and healthy 30 percent drop.

For the overall work force, the fatality rate from workplace injuries was 3.3 per 100,000 in 2009. That means the rate for Hispanics was 12 percent higher than for the total work force, down considerably from the 30 percent gap three years earlier.

FULL story at link.

[jwirr]

1. I do not know if they are or not but in our area this can be explained

by the fact that they are often working the more dangerous jobs that no one else wants: packing plants, high rise building sites, etc. Or at least that is who is doing those jobs that I know about. If there is a drop in the deaths and injuries then it may be that many of the building jobs no longer exist in our recession.

[Travis_0004]

2. Exactly what I thought

If you told me accident rates for meat packing plants were higher than accident rates for Lawyers, I would not be surprised. Hispanics have a of of lower class jobs, and those jobs tend to be more dangerous.