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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | April 21, 2017 | PAGE 15 A GRIM PATTERN: Presidential voting and workplace deaths By Paul Feldman FairWarning More than 4,800 American workers are killed on the job each year. But in states that were carried by Donald Trump, the chances of dying at work are higher than in states that Hillary Clinton won. With a single exception, the states that voted Republican had at least three job-related deaths per 100,000 workers, according to the most recent federal labor statistics for 2015. In all but two states that went Democratic, the workplace death rate was less than three. Two states that Trump won by land- slide margins, North Dakota and Wyoming, had the highest fatality rates of 12.5 and 12.0 per 100,000 workers, respectively — more than four times the death rates of most states that went for Clinton. A key factor, experts say, is that red states tend to have a higher percentage of hazardous blue-collar jobs, while the more urbanized blue states have more white-collar and service jobs. “The big cities where Hillary got most of her votes are not where the foundries, the mills, the logging, the mines are,” said Adam Finkel, a for- mer OSHA official now at the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania Law School. And with the Trump Administration and Republican Congress pledging sweeping cuts to federal regulations, which they say will spur economic growth, some analysts warn that work- ers in states that voted for Trump could be in greater peril. “Workers and citizens in states in which a majority voted for Trump have much to lose if the Trump Ad- ministration weakens enforcement or reduces support for health, safety and employment standards,” said Profes- sor Thomas A. Kochan, co-director of MIT’s Institute for Work and Employ- ment Research. “Trump states have, on average, weaker state-level laws and enforcement agencies than do states that have stronger Democratic histories.” Since the relatively small number of workplace deaths can give rise to ran- dom variations, particularly in low population states, analysts caution against giving too much weight to the statistics. Nevertheless, the most recent data follow a pattern of death rates be- ing higher in the South and Appalachia and lower in New England and the West Coast, said John Mendeloff, a professor at the University of Pitts- burgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. “Where workers are lower paid, not “Workers and citizens in states in which a majority voted for Trump have much to lose if the Trump Administration weakens enforcement or reduces support for health, safety and employment stan- dards. Trump states have, on average, weaker state level laws and enforcement agen- cies than do states that have stronger Democratic histo- ries.” — Prof. Thomas A. Kochan Co-director MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research as skilled, easier to replace, that prob- ably gives lesser incentives for safety to employers,” Mendeloff said. “In other words, the costs of accidents are lower.” The pattern is strikingly similar to the link between state voting prefer- ences in the November election and traffic death rates. As FairWarning re- ported earlier this month, the states that favored Trump consistently had higher traffic fatality rates than the states that backed Clinton. Since the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created in 1970 during the tenure of President Nixon, workplace deaths have shrunk nationwide from 38 a day to 13, agency data shows. During that period, which also saw the enactment of such measures as the Mine Safety and Health Act, the death rate for miners has dropped by more than 75 percent, according to research by the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for low wage workers. Although Trump’s controversial first nominee for labor secretary, An- drew Puzder, withdrew and his re- placement R. Alexander Acosta has yet to be confirmed, efforts to scale back workplace protections are al- ready underway. The Senate voted to strike down an Obama-era rule requiring businesses seeking federal contracts to disclose previous labor violations — anything from wage-and-hour abuses to work- place hazards. The move came under the Congressional Review Act, which Republican lawmakers are using to tar- get a number of environmental and health rules enacted during the Obama Administration. Also vulnerable is an OSHA regu- lation requiring companies to submit workplace injury rates for posting on the Internet. Interest groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Chicken Council filed suit in federal court in Oklahoma to have the measure overturned. OSHA has yet to reply to the law- suit, and it’s uncertain how, or if, the agency will defend the rule. But in a sign of the times, among the first peo- ple dispatched by the Trump Adminis- tration to the Labor Dept. was long- time business lobbyist Geoffrey Burr, who as a vice president of Associated Builders and Contractors fought both the requirement for federal contractors to disclose labor violations and the electronic filing of injury rates. Business groups contend that fed- eral regulations are weighing down the economy. According to Eric J. Conn, a Washington, D.C., attorney who spe- cializes in defending OSHA cases, government rules “when taken collec- tively, can stifle job growth.” Cutbacks in labor protections would reverse the approach of the Obama Administration, which stepped up en- forcement and upgraded safety stan- dards for exposure to silica, beryllium and other hazards. “If they start cutting back on en- forcement and do fewer inspections, I think that will likely lead to more workplace deaths,” said David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor in charge of OSHA during the Obama Administration. “Many employers don’t need OSHA to motivate them to protect their workers, but others clearly do.” “Where are the trenches and where are the derricks?” Finkel asked. “The hazards are in the red counties and so that’s where the death toll will rise if all of a sudden there was no enforce- ment or if there was a rollback of ex- isting regulations.” For whatever reason, workplace death rate statistics for 2015 almost precisely mirrored 2016 presidential voting results. The only red state with a death rate lower than 3.0 was Arizona (2.4). The lowest death rates were in de- pendably blue states ranging from the very largest to the very smallest — California at 2.2, Washington and Massachusetts at 2.1, Delaware at 1.9, and Rhode Island at 1.2. (Editor’s Note: This story was re- ported by FairWarning (www.fair- warning.org), a nonprofit news organ- ization based in Pasadena, Calif., that focuses on public health, consumer and environmental issues.)
