Remembering Those We’ve Lost and Fighting For Safer Workplaces.

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Dear <<First Name>>,

For many, the workplace is where most of our time is spent and the statistics underscore the urgent need for creating and maintaining stronger workplace safety protections for all workers.

According to Oregon AFL-CIO’s President, Graham Trainor, “Each day, more than 340 workers are killed on the job across the country and more than 6,000 suffer injury and illness because of working conditions that are preventable.”

Other statistics he shared during the Oregon AFL-CIO's annual worker memorial day remembrance on April 26:

In Oregon, we lost 56 workers last year
Oregon has the second highest rate of injury and illness on the job nationally and it would take 65 years for OR OSHA to inspect every workplace once, which is, sadly, significantly better than every other state in the country.
The risks are not shared equally among all workers. In 2022, black worker deaths nationally were the highest we have seen in 15 years, and for Latine workers, the risk is a staggering 24% higher than the national average.
60% of workers lost are immigrants

Today we uplift Sebastian Francisco Perez, a 38 year old Guatemalan worker who came to Oregon to provide and support his family.

On June 26, 2021, Sebastian was working on installing pipes at a tree farm on a 110 degree day. He was found unconscious in the field by his coworkers after doing hard work alone for many hours. It is reported that at least 2-3 other heat deaths happened that same week and 100s of complaints were sent to OR OSHA as a result.
Each year, many migrant and seasonal farmworkers have to work through heat, cold, wildfires, and (recently) the pandemic.
Sebastian’s death was preventable.

Though worker advocates were already engaged in a rulemaking process to create a strong heat rule in Oregon, it took Sebastian’s death and public vigils to honor his life, for OR OSHA to adopt temporary rules to protect workers from extreme heat conditions. Fast forward to the summer of 2022, Oregon finally adopted one of the strongest heat rules in the nation.

The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) is a network that supports workers and organizations to demand jobs that are safe, healthy and free from exploitation and abuse. Our worker safety coalition, Safe Jobs Oregon, is an affiliate member of COSH, who has repeatedly said, “No worker should ever have to sacrifice their life for a paycheck.”

We know that immigrant Latine workers do some of the most dangerous jobs, and are injured and die at work at higher rates than other groups of workers. Foreign-born, Latine workers made up 8.2 percent of the employed U.S. workforce, but 14.0 percent of work-related deaths in 2021. The fatality rate for Latine workers is 25% higher than the overall job fatality rate.

All of this makes sense because the most dangerous jobs often have a high density of immigrant workers. NWJP’s clients tend to work in a few main industries: construction, farming and forestry, food processing and manufacturing. For example, BLS data confirms that these jobs have high rates of workers identifying as Latine (or Hispanic): 39.9% of food processing workers, 49.6% of tree trimmers and pruners, and 44.6% of farming, fishing, and forestry occupations.

These same industries also have high rates of workplace injuries. Dairy manufacturing and animal slaughtering, for example, have high rates of workplace injuries, according to BLS data, as do seafood preparation and packaging and food manufacturing overall.

As we remember and honor the memory of workers who have lost their lives, we renew our commitment to hold government officials and employers accountable by advocating for stronger comprehensive safety protocols and centering the safety efforts of all workers and their families.

STANDING FOR DIGNITY IN THE WORKPLACE

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