​ND ONE OF THE DEADLIEST IN THE NATION

For the fourth year in a row, North Dakota ranks as one of the deadliest states in the nation for worker fatalities, according to an annual report just released by the AFL-CIO.

North Dakota ranked 49th out of 50 states in the 2016 Death on the Job Report with 9.8 deaths per 100,000 workers behind only Wyoming which had 13.1 deaths per 100,000 workers.

The next closest state to North Dakota is Alaska, at 48th with 7.8 deaths per 100,000 workers. The statistics are for the year 2014, due to a year lag in reporting from government agencies.

This year’s rank is up from last year when North Dakota was ranked 50th with a fatality rate of 14.3 workers per 100,000 workers. North Dakota was 50th for two years prior to that as well. While it has improved, the 2014 rate is still 40% greater than the state’s fatality rate in 2007.

For some insight into what the report found and what should be done about it, HPR caught up with Waylon Hedegaard, President of the North Dakota AFL-CIO. We asked about how much of this is just because we have an oil boom and why North Dakota lags so far in worker safety.

High Plains Reader: What does the 2016 AFL-CIO Death on the Job Report show for North Dakota?

Waylon Hedegaard: First you have to understand that this year’s report due to the lag in statistics from both OSHA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics actually covers 2014. So in 2014, we ranked 49th in the nation for worker fatalities which means we killed per hour worked than every other state in the union except Wyoming. And that’s actually an improvement since the 3 years previous to that, we were 50 out 50.

HPR: So, a little bit of an improvement. Why do you think things have changed a little bit?

WH: I think it’s a marginal improvement. I don’t think by going from 50 to 49, we can run a victory lap. We have a lot further to go. A lot of this improvement could be simply just statistical error in here. If there is any improvement, there’s less new people on the job, people are getting more experience learning the work better. But nevertheless 49th is nothing to brag about.

HPR: Are a lot of the worker fatalities in North Dakota just simply due to the amount of workers in the oil patch?

WH: True, it is due to workers in the oil patch and that’s what everybody says, that’s just the oil fields. Like somehow that’s an expected result or that’s just required for the oil field. But in all honesty, I would counter that Texas has an oil field. If you just compare oil field deaths to oil field deaths, we still kill more people than just about anywhere else. So Texas has an oil field, Alaska has an oil field, Montana has an old field and just oil field deaths in comparison, we still have more oil field deaths in comparison to any other state except Wyoming. And three years prior to that, we beat Wyoming too.

HPR: So why do you think that is? If you are saying apples to oranges, just like comparing us to Texas, why is North Dakota so bad on worker safety?

WH: I think we have lax regulation. I think we don’t have nearly enough OSHA inspectors. Right now, if you went by OSHA inspectors, it would take them 150 years doing a standard inspection to inspect all the workplaces in North Dakota, there’s not nearly enough to go around. I would also counter that due to our Legislature, we have the lowest workers comp premiums in the nation by quite a ways. We’re actually 4/5ths of the nearest state which by the way is Wyoming also. You cannot make it cheaper for companies to injure their employees and not expect to have a high rate of death. Those two have to be related somehow.

HPR: There’s been a few years of these reports now where we are ranking as one of the worst in the nation, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of impetus or push to change things as far as the regulations among elected leaders. Why do you think that is?

WH: I think when your priorities become getting oil out of the ground and having people make money over protection of workers, I think this kind of result is inevitable. We have to start valuing our workers lives and health as much as we value our economy and the business community making as much money as they can. They have to start evening that out.

HPR: What sort of things would you push for to make a change in worker’s safety? What needs to change? Any specific things that need to change?

WH: Well there’s so many different aspects to this. At the AFL-CIO, we would advocate far more training and mandated training to work on these things. I was a construction boilermaker for 23 years. We couldn’t set foot on these sites without tons of training, we still can’t. Our own union and all of our building trades union have constant levels of safety training, making people aware. When you are a small, fly by night outfit and you just hire anybody to do anything without that knowledge, without that knowledge of how to protect yourself, we are just sacrificing people. If we can get mandated training, to set foot on an oil site, you have to have an OSHA 10, you have to have an OSHA 30, you have to have some basic training on how to protect yourself on whatever oil field site you are on. These would be a good start at the very least. And also making it more expensive when companies really do injure and hurt people, making those punishments hurt. Because right now they don’t hurt enough or they would vastly slow down.

HPR: If someone is hearing about this and concerned about it, what would you suggest they do? Maybe talk to their legislators?

WH: We definitely look at this next election and start electing legislators who put people on par with profits. I would start calling your legislators so they understand we are concerned. For far too long, everybody acted like there wasn’t a problem even when the numbers show that there was a very serious problem. And we have people out there refuting the government numbers saying they are really not accurate when they really are. They gather the numbers in North Dakota the same way they gather them in North Dakota or Wyoming and Texas and any other state. But there’s a whole group of people out there that say just North Dakota, they are being unfair to North Dakota. Well no they are not. North Dakota is being unfair to its workers.

You can read the Death On The Job report online at http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Job-Safety/Death-on-the-Job-Report