Sixty-six workers in Massachusetts died on the job or from job-related illnesses last year, including an 88-year-old MIT physicist who fell from a piece of equipment and a 31-year-old road paver hit by a truck, according to a report released yesterday.
Although the total number of deaths declined from 80 the year before, worker advocates urged government officials to impose stiffer fines and stronger safety measures to protect workers. US Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has called workplace safety her highest priority and is expected to announce tougher enforcement measures today at a ceremony marking Workers' Memorial Day.
"What's particularly disturbing is that many of the deaths were actually preventable," said Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, a nonprofit organization that coauthored the report with the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and the Western Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health. "There are basic safety measures that employers should know full well. . . . . Unfortunately, in some cases, they're putting profits before safety."
In Massachusetts, the construction industry had the largest number of deaths, with 17 workers who fell, were run over by equipment, or suffered other calamities. But the deaths cut across a wide range of fields, including taxi drivers, fishermen, electricians, and firefighters.
The causes of deaths ranged widely, too, from on-the-job injuries and work-related illness to homicide.
In the report, advocates criticized the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency in charge of setting and enforcing workplace safety standards, for lacking sufficient money and staff to inspect work sites and protect workers. Last year, the agency fined companies an average of $9,939 for safety violations that resulted in a worker's death in Massachusetts, which worker advocates said offered employers little incentive to improve safety protection.
Solis, the labor secretary, has vowed to strengthen OSHA by increasing its budget and adding inspectors nationwide. Nationally, an average of 5,680 workers die on the job every year.
"Worker safety and health has been dormant for too long," Solis said in a statement yesterday. "My bottom line: I want the nation's workers safe."
The report also called for criminal prosecution of employers who it said recklessly endanger workers and greater efforts to protect immigrant workers, who are 24 percent of the state's fatalities, though only 17 percent of the workforce.
OSHA fined MIT $35,000 in the death of medical physicist Kenneth Wright for failing to report the incident within eight hours of his death and for failing to guard an open platform that was more than 4 feet above the ground. Wright fell from a piece of equipment in a laboratory and suffered injuries that led to his death.
His wife, Peggy, said yesterday that she thought the death was an accident and that she did not hold MIT responsible. She said her husband loved his work and was helping physicians to craft hip replacements that would last a lifetime, instead of a few years.
"He felt that he was doing so much to help people," she said. "He just kept working."
MIT declined to comment.
In another case, family members are waging a campaign to improve safety.
Christopher Augeri, whose son, Robert, was killed by a dump truck while on a paving job on Interstate 495 in Lawrence, is calling for the installation of safety equipment such as rear-mounted cameras on any vehicle with a substantial blind spot, to protect pedestrians and police details, as well as laborers, from getting run over.
Robert Augeri was struck and killed June 3, 2008, his 31st birthday.
