12 Workers are Killed Daily on the Job in America

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

It would come as no surprise if you were unaware that April 28 is Workers’ Memorial Day. We do not get the day off work or school. Banks do not close. Government does not shut down. The media do not even mention it.

However, it might come as a surprise that a dozen or so U.S. workers die on the job each day, given the common belief that the country is the wealthiest and greatest in the world. After all, don’t we have modern medicine, safety devices on our machines, effective training and mandatory breaks for those who operate dangerous machinery?

While American workers are responsible for the vast wealth accumulated by the richest CEO’s, bankers and industrialists, their lives and wellbeing are hardly valued at all. They are easily replaced by the millions of unemployed and underemployed. Slowing down production to a safe speed, installing safety features, and properly training employees all cut into profits and are far more expensive than a bouquet and a condolence check.

Working to Live, Not Dying to Work

Legislators routinely mischaracterize safety regulations as “job killers.” However, weak safety regulations are, in reality, people killers. In 1970, the year that the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) was passed, there were more than 14,000 deaths on the job nationally. By 2010, the number of occupational deaths was down to 4,574, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Despite this progress, there are still too many deaths occurring on the job and job deaths are increasing in some regions. The Sacramento Bee notes that workplace fatalities increased by roughly 25% in Pennsylvania between 2009 and 2010, despite a decline in the number of people actually working. There have also been many notable preventable workplace fatalities recently, like the Deep Water Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 workers, and the Massey Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion, which killed 29 workers.

It is also worth noting that close to 3 million workers are injured or made sick at work each year.

No one should have to die or suffer serious injuries just to put food on the table.

Kill the Poor: U.S. Military Spending Doubled Since 2001

A new report released by SIPRI, a Swedish think tank, indicates that U.S. military spending has nearly doubled since 2001, report Judd Legum in Think Progress.  The U.S. spent $698 billion on the military last year, an 81% increase over the last decade. The U.S. currently spends six times more than China, the second largest military spender. Overall, the world spends $1.6 trillion on the military, with the United States spending more than the next 9 nations combined.

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Economist Joseph Stiglitz argues that these numbers are significantly lower than the actual expenditures. He believes that the true cost of just the Iraq war could be over $3 trillion by 2017, or $180 billion a year. Furthermore, the Swedish report does not include new wars, like the one in Libya.

As shocking as this huge waste of money is, what is left out of such an analysis is the true cost in terms of human death, injury, privation and misery. Civilians are bearing the brunt of these wars, not only in terms of casualties, but also in destroyed homes and infrastructures, job loss, environmental devastation, terror and stress. Generations of children have now grown up in Afghanistan and Iraq without knowing peace.

Poor and working class people in America also suffer from this phenomenal waste of resources. While the ruling elite demand that we live within our means by gutting education, and services for the poor, disabled and elderly, they continue to live beyond their means by spending lavishly on warfare and bloodshed to protect their financial interest abroad. There always seems to be money available for the military, but not for health care, resulting in thousands of poor people dying prematurely in the U.S. from treatable diseases and injuries.¹ Despite the end of the world scenarios being spun around the deficit, there are plenty of funds available for a new war in Libya, but we cannot afford investigators to make sure our food and workplaces are safe, resulting in thousands of deaths annually from food-borne illness and workplace accidents.² We have no problem finding money to kill and maim Iraqis with depleted uranium and white phosphorus³, but we cannot find enough to keep our own air clean, resulting in 9,000 premature deaths from air pollution each year in California alone.⁴

1.      A, 2009 study (PDF)  from Harvard Medical School said that lack of health coverage can be tied to about 45,000 deaths a year in the United States.

2.      In 2009, there were 4,340 fatal workplace injuries (compared with 5,214 in 2008).  have averaged 156 fatalities per year or about 3 percent of the revised totals. According to the Centers for Disease Control, food borne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths annually in the U.S. 1,500 of these deaths are caused by Salmonella, Listeria, and Toxoplasma.

3.      The U.S. government has admitted it used white phosphorus against Iraqis during the assault on Fallujah, according to a report by Democracy Now in violation of international law banning the use of chemical weapons.

4.      According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 2 million people world-wide die prematurely each year due to air pollution, while the California Air Resources Board reports that 9,000 die in California each year from air pollution.