Protect the People, II

“I am an injured worker that is dealing with WSI right now and I plan to get through my injury then pack up and leave North Dakota. I have children that I don’t want to see growing up here then working here. If my kids were to go through what I am right now I would blame myself for it. I cannot risk my kids working in North Dakota and getting injured on the job.”
—ND Injured Worker (Posted on ND Injured Workers Support Group blog on Aug. 11)

While North Dakotans are waiting and watching for Workplace Safety Insurance (WSI) issues to be resolved, workplace injuries continue. Some of those injuries are fatal.

WSI is paralyzed by political controversy. Meanwhile, injured workers continue to report that they face unacceptable levels of risk of injury on the job.

That WSI has accumulated in excess of $1 billion in reserves begs the question why more monies are not dedicated to workplace safety issues. The blog quoted above, the injured worker who doesn’t want his kids to go through the same thing, says better than we can what needs to be said.

Last week, one more worker died on the job here in North Dakota. Thirty-seven-year-old Timothy Lynn Solberg of Fargo apparently fell from the roof at a new construction site down into an elevator shaft at 4450 S. 42nd Street South in Fargo on August 14. The Fargo Police report said the incident is under investigation as a workplace accident.

We remind HPR readers of our May 1 editorial entitled “Protect the People.” That opinion piece followed the release of a federal study indicating that North Dakota ranks sixth nationally in workplace deaths. The report said that North Dakota had 8.7 workplace fatalities per 100,000 in 2006, more than twice as high as average in the country, which was 4.0 per 100,000.

North Dakota had 31 workplace deaths in 2006.

According to the report, “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect,” released by the AFL-CIO, there are only seven OSHA safety inspectors currently working in North Dakota. In 2007, only 144 construction workplace safety and health inspections were conducted in the entire state. Non-construction inspections numbered 114.

Were OSHA to inspect each workplace in North Dakota just once, it would take 90 years.

Whether it is OSHA or WSI or whoever is responsible, it is absolutely unacceptable to allow the continuance of a workplace death rate that is twice that of the nation’s average. We’ll repeat: 218 percent of the nation’s average workplace death rate.

A change of attitude is needed. For starters, we should quit calling workplace deaths “accidents.” In reality, some of them are avoidable accidents.

We call on state leaders to marshal the forces of OSHA and WSI to cut our workplace death rate in half at a very minimum and not to accept anything less. Had that been our acceptable standard, North Dakota would have cut 2006 deaths from 31 to 15 or 16.

That’s significant. Especially if you are family members or friends of those killed on the jobsite.

Rather than a pattern allowing the eventual reduction of fines for workplace safety violations, we should accelerate fines and penalties for repeat offenses. We should make it painful for businesses to put their workers’ lives at risk.

Something has to change. These are human beings, not machines, not numbers. They are sons, brothers, husbands, and dads. They are daughters, sisters, wives and moms. They are North Dakota people who need and deserve protection.