In 2014, and according to a recent report of AFL-CIO, on average, 13 workers got serious injuries and over 10,000 were hurt or made ill every day.
There are 150 job-related fatalities in the U.S every day, reported AFL-CIO this week, and that number doesn’t even include deaths from chronic occupational diseases, which kill about 50,000 workers each year.
The daily toll is 150 workers a day, but federal regulators say that many of these incidents are preventable.
Just this month, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) proposed fines against two companies involved in two accidents, arguing that employee safety was disregarded. A worker died in each incident, and they are just two cases of all the men who die every year from preventable workplace injuries and illnesses.
On 2014, 4,821 workers were killed on the job in the U.S, according to a federal labor statistics and OSHA data that reported the risks many American workers are facing. That year’s fatal injury rate stood at 3.4 per 100,000 workers.
“Too many employers are cutting corners, and workers are paying the highest price,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement released with the findings.
After an investigation of October 2015 shooting in Irvington, New Jersey, OSHA proposed a fine of $14,000 because the employer of a store had exposed employees to workplace hazards. Even after the incident that ended up with the death of one employee, the employer did nothing to implement safety measures to protect workers, affirmed Kris Hoffman, OSHA’s area director in
After the death of the worker who died after inhaling hydrogen sulfide gas from the manure he was loading onto a trailer at a farm in Vickery, Ohio, OSHA cited the fertilizer company and proposed $16,800 in fines earlier this month because of serious safety violations.
The findings
According to the study based in 2014, construction is the most deadly sector with 899 workers that died while working, in transportation and warehousing, 766 employees died and 584 died in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting. In the same year, violence increased and was the cause of 765 deaths, 724 of them from another person and 41 by an animal.
Those supervising sales workers took the lead of death from workplace homicide with 58 deaths, followed by motor vehicle operators with 50 deaths and law enforcement workers with 46 deaths.
Source: CBS News