Hispanic worker deaths up 76% since 1992

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2009-07-19-workerdeaths_N.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

Hispanic worker deaths up 76% since 1992

Lack of training, poor communication skills and exploitation of workers also lead to accidents and deaths, Seminario said.

Hispanic workers have fallen off roofs, been crushed under heavy machinery and run over by trucks, according to workers' rights advocates, such as the Austin-based Workers Defense Project. Austin alone has reported four Hispanic deaths this year. Last month, OSHA pledged to bolster the number of inspectors in Texas in response to the growing number of construction-related deaths, more than half of them Hispanic.

Workers without legal documentation to be in the U.S. are less inclined to join a union, which helps protect workers, or protest when conditions seem dangerous, said Raj Nayak of the California-based National Employment Law Project. "They're doing the most dangerous work for longer hours," Nayak said.

Jose Omar Puerto, 19, from Honduras, was repairing a roof on an Austin apartment building in 2007 when his aluminum ladder became entangled in electrical wires. He was electrocuted and killed, his sister, Marta Puerto, said.

His company paid for the funeral and the body's return to Honduras, she said. The family received no further compensation.

[notesdev]

1. Why would they join a union

when they come here to take jobs from union members? They are scabs by their very nature.

[Hannah Bell]

2. bs. better question: why aren't the unions making more effort to organize them?

[notesdev]

4. Because the reason to have them here

in the first place, is to undermine and underprice union labor. If they were unionized, they would quickly be replaced by the next wave of unregulated labor dumped on the market. The reason these people are hired is because they don't get the protections that US workers get, and therefore are a lot cheaper to hire, easier to abuse, easier to discard (same goes for a lot of legal foreign labor as well, H1-Bs come to mind in particular).

With some areas of the country pushing 20% unemployment there is no reason to have foreign labor here, now. We are experiencing a severe labor glut and a good reason for that is the massive labor dumping onto our shores.

[Hannah Bell]

5. i understand why they're here; that's the reason to organize them.

why isn't it happening?

[notesdev]

6. Because they're all one phone call away

from deportation... this vulnerability is exactly why they are desirable to employ, from the perspective of unscrupulous employers. "Hey, I'm reporting an employee who gave me a false SS#... can you handle this? Thanks, buddy!"

Who is going to stick their neck out and get a visit from 'la migra'? Who among them wants to demand the protections that will make them cost as much as a US union worker, thus pricing themselves out of work?

It's not feasible to demand rights for people who don't even have the right to be present, that's why nobody has done it or will do it.

[Hannah Bell]

7. right. that's why no immigrants were organized 1880s-1940s, the height of the labor movement.

[marmar]

3. Wow. That didn't take long.

:eyes: