For the 27th year in a row, the AFL-CIO has produced Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect. The report gathers evidence on the state of safety and health protections for America’s workers.
Passed in 1970, the Occupational Safety and Health Act has saved the lives of more than 559,000 working people. President Barack Obama had a strong record of improving working conditions by strengthening enforcement, issuing key safety and health standards, and improving anti-retaliation and other protections for workers. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has moved aggressively on his deregulatory agenda, repealing and delaying job safety and other rules, and proposing deep cuts to the budget and the elimination of worker safety and health training programs.
These are challenging times for working people and their unions, and the prospects for worker safety and health protections are uncertain. What is clear, however, is that the toll of workplace injury, illness and death remains too high, and too many workers remain at serious risk. There is much more work to be done. Here are 15 key things you need to know from this year’s report, which primarily covers data from 2016.
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150 workers died each day from hazardous working conditions.
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5,190 workers were killed on the job in the United States—an increase from 4,836 deaths the previous year.
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An additional 50,000 to 60,000 workers died from occupational diseases.
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The job fatality rate increased to 3.6 per 100,000 workers from 3.4 per 100,000 workers.
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Service-providing industries saw the largest increase in the job fatality rate. The rate declined in manufacturing and mining and was unchanged in construction—all industries that receive the greatest oversight from OSHA or the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
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Employers reported nearly 3.7 million work-related injuries and illnesses.
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Underreporting is widespread—the true toll of work-related injuries and illnesses is 7.4 million to 11.1 million each year.
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The states with the highest job fatality rates were Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota.
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Workplace violence deaths increased significantly. The 866 worker deaths caused by violence in 2016 made it the second-leading cause of workplace death. Violence also was responsible for more than 27,000 lost-time injuries.
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Women are at greater risk than men; they suffered two-thirds of the lost-time injuries related to workplace violence.
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There is no federal OSHA standard to protect workers from workplace violence; the Trump administration has sidelined an OSHA workplace violence standard.
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Latino and immigrant workers’ safety and health has improved, but the risk to these workers still is greater than other workers.
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Older workers are at high risk, with 36% of all worker fatalities occurring among those ages 55 or older.
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The industries with the most deaths were construction, transportation, agriculture, and mining and extraction.
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The cost of job injuries and illnesses is enormous—estimated at $250 billion to $360 billion a year.
The Trump administration and the Republican majority in Congress have launched a major assault on regulatory protections and are moving aggressively to roll back regulations, block new protections, and put agency budgets and programs on the chopping block. The data in this year’s Death on the Job report shows that now is a time when workers need more job safety and health protection, not less.
