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.)