Death of 31-year-old construction worker in Seattle highlights health and safety issues amid carpenters’ strike

Seattle

On Monday, September 20, construction worker Bryan Phillips, 31, died on the Washington State Convention Center project site in Seattle. Bryan, a member of Cement Masons Local 528, was a plasterer and was fatally injured when his elevator equipment crashed from the second level of the construction site. The Seattle Fire Department was called to 9th Avenue to conduct a “rescue rescue,” but was unable to save the worker’s life.

Bryan Phillips (left) (GoFundMe)

The $ 1.9 billion summit topping up of the Washington State Convention Center was established in 2018 and construction continued despite the spread of the coronavirus and concerns that the pandemic would dampen travel, tourism and the financial viability of the convention center undermine.

The incident sparked a spate of support, with over 700 people donating a total of $ 68,816 to the Phillips family on a GoFundMe page. Workers from a variety of construction and other professions posted comments with their donations, expressed condolences to the family, and remembered Bryan as a good friend and colleague.

At the time of the young worker’s death, 2,000 carpenters across West Washington were on strike on their fourth day to strike over wages, benefits and paid parking. Simple carpenters fought to close construction sites in the Seattle area as part of their strike, as none of the other building trades can complete their work without their labor. The Washington State Convention Center site should have closed as part of the strike, but the Pacific Northwest Carpenters Union (NWCU) and other construction unions pledged not to strike the site under a so-called project labor agreement (PLA). Negotiated by trade unions and state and local Democratic Party officials on mostly state-funded projects, these bargain deals were used to keep 10,000 of the 12,000 carpenters in the region at work during the strike.

Executive Secretary and Treasurer Evelyn Shapiro of the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters and other union officials made superficial statements of their “shock and grief” over the death of the young worker. But the NWCU and other construction union leaders have long worked with the giant construction companies and company-controlled politicians to increase the exploitation of construction workers and undermine their workers’ health and safety.

Ordinary carpenters on strike since September 16 have rejected four Shapiro and NWCU-promoted concession contracts. Workers have tried to extend their strike against fierce opposition from the union bureaucracy, which has red baited them and threatened legal action against workers involved in “unsanctioned” pickets. With negotiations resumed on Tuesday, the union is rushing to push through yet another sell-off agreement and end the strike before workers can vote on it.

Serious injuries and fatalities are common in the industry as construction workers use extremely heavy equipment, work on their feet all day, and work on high-rise buildings. In April 2019, iron workers Travis Corbet, 33 and Andrew Yoder, 31, were killed when a crane they were dismantling on the Google campus in downtown Seattle collapsed. Two passers-by were also killed in their crushed vehicles.

In January 2018, a worker died when he fell from an elevator shaft while building a new dormitory at Seattle University. Also in 2018, 59-year-old construction worker Ducas Aucoin was crushed to death when a forklift overturned while unloading materials on a sloping sidewalk at a construction site in Madison Valley. In May 2015, a construction worker in his 40s was injured in a 6-meter fall from construction equipment on a site near Capitol Hill Station.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 5,333 U.S. workers died at work in 2019, an average of more than 100 per week or 15 deaths each day. One in five (1,061) of these deaths occurred in the construction industry. Falls are the leading cause of death for construction workers, accounting for more than a third (36.4 percent) of all deaths in the industry. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), incidents (15.4 percent), electric shocks (7.2 percent), and incidents (5.4 percent) are the second most common fatal hazards in 2019.

Between 2003 and 2017, construction workers ranked third in non-fatal falls, behind retail workers and healthcare workers. In response to the growing anger of workers, OSHA began its fall prevention training and National Campaign to Prevent Falls in Construction, along with the National Employment Research Agenda (NORA), the Construction Sector Council, the Center for Construction Research and Education (CPWR), and the National Institute for Safety and Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH). Despite this training and information sharing, the rate of falls and deaths among construction workers has remained relatively constant.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought new dangers to the building trade. Described as “essential” by both Democratic and Republican Party officials, construction workers have been forced to go full steam ahead on construction projects. The physical, practical and collaborative nature of the work means that many workers are close to one another in an enclosed space. As a result, minimal action by employers and trade unions has done little to stop the spread of infections and deaths.

Data on the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths among construction workers is difficult to find in the US due to a lack of mass testing and transparent reporting. However, the data available shows that construction workers have been hit hard by the pandemic. In Washington state, construction is the sixth highest source of COVID-19 outbreaks in the workplace. A study conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles, August through October 2020 found that construction workers had the highest infection rate in any other industry, even higher than that of healthcare workers. In Colorado, construction workers accounted for the highest proportion of COVID-19 deaths of any industry, accounting for 111 deaths, or 12 percent of the total 5,921 working-age deaths reported by the state.

A bulletin distributed by the CPWR found that nearly 60 percent of construction workers are at higher risk of developing serious illness from COVID-19 due to their age, medical conditions, and other risk factors such as high smoking rates. According to 2018 data, 20 percent of construction workers have some type of respiratory disease like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma, which increases the risk of serious complications from COVID-19. A quarter of construction workers have high-risk diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart, kidney or liver diseases. These likely conditions put construction workers at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 and developing severe symptoms if infected.

Construction workers also have a high incidence of chronic pain, substance abuse, and suicide. Due to a high risk of injury, many construction workers get abused drugs like opioids to keep up on a construction site that is not waiting for them to recover. In 2020, the CDC conducted a study that found that men who work in construction have one of the highest rates of suicide. In 2016, the suicide rate for men in construction and mining was 49.4 in 100,000, almost double the total suicide rate for civilian men (16-64 years old) who lived in 32 states (27.4 / 100,000). work, and is five times the rate of all fatal accidents in the construction industry in 2018 (9.5 out of 100,000).

Workload, long hours, limited family time, social isolation, and work insecurity between projects all contribute to the depression and stress that drives construction workers to turn to these acts of desperation. The following tragedies will undoubtedly leave lifelong scars on the families, colleagues and loved ones of the workers.

These egregious statistics reveal the role of the construction unions, who negotiated and enforced the dangerous working conditions and general environment that suffer, get sick and die of hundreds of thousands of workers. This includes fake security systems of the “common labor administration”, which always bow to the demands of productivity and profit.

In April, Executive Secretary-Treasurer Shapiro hailed the hasty reopening of the economy, even though the pandemic continued to take its deadly toll. “Today I have new hope,” she said. “Many choose to have a vaccination; Children are returning to school, small businesses and restaurants are welcoming more guests. “

The ruthless reopening of the economy by Governor Jay Inslee, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and all the unions has enriched pandemic profiteers like Jeff Bezos and Washington state companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Boeing. It was a disaster for the workers. The state, which recorded the nation’s first confirmed COVID-19 death in February 2020, had 664,000 cases and 7,824 official deaths.

Completing multi-million dollar construction projects for Amazon and Microsoft is no more important than the safety and lives of workers. At the center of the current strike and the growing struggles of health workers, educators, and other segments of the labor force in the United States and the world is the struggle to halt the relentless sacrifices of life and livelihoods for the profits of the super-rich.

In the struggle to take control of the struggle in their own hands, carpenters and all construction workers must form a network of simple committees that are independent from the unions. These committees will enable workers to call for better wages, benefits and working conditions on their behalf, based on the principle that workers’ lives and livelihoods must take precedence over private profit. This means fighting for the immediate closure of non-essential workplaces with full worker compensation, strict containment measures to minimize COVID-19 infections in key workplaces, and improving general working conditions through higher wages, reduced working hours and improved safety conditions. Contrary to what the NWCU and other unions have agreed with the builders, simple committees will fight for control of workers over the pace of work, working conditions and health and safety.

For more information on establishing grassroots committees, carpenters and other construction workers should contact the World Socialist Web Site.