Slashed Throat, Cooked in an Oven, Electrocutions and Heat Stroke: Why We Write the Weekly Toll

This morning we published yet another edition of the Weekly Toll  — a list of a few of the workers who die on the job every week in the United States.  At mid-year, I thought this might be a good time to reflect on the Toll and the toll.

An average of 100 workers die every week on the job (and 20 times that many die of work-related disease every week, but those are almost impossible to track).  Of those hundred, we at Confined Space are only able to track around 20 from over 100 Google searches.  The rest are either lost because the media didn’t notice, or because my Google searches are missing them.

But those we do identify are shocking and upsetting.  Last week, for example, three workers died of heat stroke (and there are probably more who were mis-diagnosed or just didn’t make the news.)  One worker slashed his throat open with a chain saw. Another baked to death in an industrial oven. Several were electrocuted. One was killed by a hit-and-run driver while worker on a highway. A worker was crushed to death when a grain silo collapsed on top of him. And as usual, there were several vehicle incidents and shootings — including two firefighters who were killed by a sniper while responding to a fire.

Last week, three workers died of heat stroke.  One worker slashed his throat open with a chain saw. Another baked to death in an industrial oven. Several were electrocuted. One was killed by a hit-and-run driver while worker on a highway. A worker was crushed to death when a grain silo collapsed on top of him. And as usual, there were several vehicle incidents and shootings — including two firefighters who were killed by a sniper while responding to a fire.

I started the Weekly Toll over 20 years ago for a number of reasons: For the average person, workplace death and injury are almost invisible. But everyone needs to understand how many workers are killed every week of every year, that most of these deaths are preventable and how great the need and the challenges are for struggling unions and small government agencies like OSHA, MSHA and NIOSH whose jobs it is to protect this nation’s workers.

But the main reason I started the Weekly Toll was to ensure that workers killed on the job were not forgotten. And to the extent possible, we should say their names. In 2003, before I launched Confined Space, I wrote an article, Acts of God, Acts of Man, where I contrasted the huge amount of attention that some workplace deaths received (namely the seven astronauts killed in the space shuttle Columbia) with two invisible construction workers who were killed at work that same week: Mustafa Boyraz and Marty Nesbitt.

Like most American workers who never made it home from work at the end of the day, they were “lucky” to get a few inches in their hometown newspapers. These victims of workplace hazards often do unglamorous, dirty jobs on construction sites and roads and in factories. They die alone, only noticed and remembered by their immediate family, friends, and coworkers. We do not hear about them, mainly because they are just regular people, and most of them die one at a time. Some never even seem to have names, because the names are withheld until the next of kin is notified. By the time that happens, the media has often already lost interest.

Contrasting those two workers with the “heroism” of the astronauts, I wrote

It takes courage to fly into space, knowing the dangers, knowing that you may die far from home. But what about the courage it takes for an immigrant to go to work on a hazardous construction site to feed his family, unable to change his working conditions and knowing that he may die far from home?

What is the difference between the courage needed to go into space, assured that billions of dollars are being spent to bring every astronaut home alive, versus going down into a deep, unprotected trench, suspecting that your employer is cutting corners on safety to save a few bucks? Millions of workers go to work every day in this country understanding that this society accepts a certain level of death in the workplace, while it demands 100 percent safety in the space program.

Every worker who doesn’t come home to their family at the end of the shift deserves the same recognition that the Columbia astronauts received. Obviously, that will never happen. But the least we can do is to tell some of their stories. And say their names.

And fight like hell to preserve those institutions that protect workers on the job — labor unions, worker organizations, OSHA, MSHA and NIOSH — and the valiant staff who have dedicated their lives to make it possible for workers to come home alive and healthy at the end of every work day.

Adios Dylan

Finally, this edition marks the last shift for my valued co-conspirator Dylan Chamberlin, a Cornell University student who sacrificed a few of his precious hours every week for the past six months to assemble the Weekly Toll.  Even after 50 years, I still remember how hard that would have been for me to do as a college student.

Dylan has now gone on to bigger and better things this summer working as organizer for RWDSU and I wish him the best. There is no nobler occupation.

So thank you Dylan and thank you to all of you out there fighting to ensure that some day the Weekly Toll will no longer be needed.