America's deadliest jobs: More than 340 workers are killed every da
A teenager suffocated to death in a soybean storage bin in Greenwood, Missouri. In Guam, a falling crane crushed a ship rigger to death. In Maplesville, Alabama, faulty cables saw a 36-year-old paper mill worker electrocuted and killed.
Those are just three recent and tragic examples of the workplace hazards that claim the lives of 343 employees every day, according to AFL-CIO, the nation's biggest union group.
And the death toll is climbing.
Some 5,190 workers were killed on the job in 2021, the latest year for which data are available.
As a proportion of the overall workforce, that's the highest rate America has seen since 2016.
The death toll in America's workplaces is climbing again. Loggers, fishers, hunters, roofers and pilots are the nation's most dangerous trades
Riegler Blacktop, an asphalt mixing and paving company in Florence, Kentucky, posted online about the tragic loss of five-year employee Autumn Collinsworth earlier this month
The numbers are particularly bad for minorities. Latino workers perish at above-average rates. Some 656 black workers died on the job in 2021, the group's highest death toll in 19 years.
The general trend this past half century has been towards safer factories, mines and farms, but experts told DailyMail.com the latest figures marked an alarming step backwards.
They blamed the shortage of inspectors for monitoring workplaces, and called for bigger penalties imposed on the bosses who take shortcuts that lead to deaths.
The group's president Liz Shuler said Americans should be 'alarmed and outraged by the tragic data.'
'Every worker who died on the job represents another empty seat at a family's kitchen table,' Shuler said.
'It is unconscionable that in the wealthiest nation in the world, black and Latino workers are facing the highest on-the-job fatality rates in nearly two decades.'
Mom-of-four Autumn Collinsworth, an asphalt roller operator, died in Kentucky this month
A recent workplace tragedy involved Autumn Collinsworth, a mom-of-four and equipment operator with Riegler Blacktop, an asphalt mixing and paving company in Florence, Kentucky.
Collinsworth, who also went by the name Fabre, over five years worked her way up from a part-time flagger to become a roller operator, the company's president Michael Riegler said online.
She died on April 12 in a 'terrible accident on a job site,' added Riegler, without elaborating.
The firm is understood to be investigating the tragedy, while cooperating with local authorities and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the body charged with inspecting worksites.
Later, in a Facebook post, Collinsworth's eldest son Brayden posted a photo of the family together at Christmastime, wearing plaid.
He asked friends and family for donations to help raise the 'three other kids who I'll be taking care of from now on.'
'Rest in peace, mom,' he added.
'Rest in peace mom,' Brayden Collinsworth posted about the tragic death of his mom in a workplace accident. He asked friends and family for donations to help raise the 'three other kids who ill be taking care of from now on'
A roofer works on a townhouse after a hurricane in Mexico Beach, Florida. Roofers, along with loggers, fishers, and hunters, have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country
Workers clean oil from the rocks and beach at a beach park in Goleta, California, after a spill. The oil and gas sector has an alarmingly high number of fatalities
Collinsworth is by no means the only recent tragedy in the building trade.
Construction, along with agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting, mining, quarrying, transport, and hydrocarbons are the most dangerous sectors of America's $27 trillion-a-year economy.
In 2021, nearly 1,000 construction workers were killed on the job.
Roofers, who spend many hours on angled building tops, have one of the most dangerous jobs in the nation.
But America's riskiest trade is logging, followed by fishers and hunters, pilots and flight engineers, iron and steel workers, truck drivers, and garbage collectors.
Many of the deaths are concentrated in six states that are known for rugged outdoors work — Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana, Louisiana, Alaska, and New Mexico.
Children and young adult workers are increasingly getting caught up in the carnage.
Many of them are immigrants without work permits who toil in dangerous conditions — and bosses know they are not likely to complain.
In 2021, 24 minors and 350 adults under the age of 25 died on the job, says the union report.
The problem, experts said, is a lack of enforcement — the OSHA doesn't have enough inspectors, and the civil penalties it imposes are too low to deter cost-cutting bosses.
A welder works on an overpass as part of an infrastructure project in Irving, Texas. Construction and metalworkers are also prone to deadly workplace accidents
'Every worker who died on the job represents another empty seat at a family's kitchen table,' said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler
The agency has only 1,871 inspectors to keep tabs on the 10.8 million workplaces under its jurisdiction.
That's only enough inspectors to check each worksite once every 190 years.
'That's not many enforcement agents when you divide it by 50 states,' Reid Maki, an expert on child labor at the National Consumers League, a nonprofit advocacy group, told DailyMail.com.
'Agriculture definitely doesn't get enough attention. There are millions of acres of farms that are not being investigated.'
Meanwhile, the average penalty for a worker's death is between $7,000 and $12,063, depending on whether the case is handled by state or federal investigators.
Only 128 worker deaths have been criminally prosecuted under OSHA since 1970.
AFL-CIO's safety director Rebecca Reindel urged Congress to spend more money and raise the number of inspectors.
'It's past time that they received the funding and staffing they need to create and enforce worker protection standards,' said Reindel.
'Employers should be held accountable.'
Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation Services is one firm that recently managed to dodge a steep fine over workplace safety.
The cleaning firm illegally worked 102 minors at 13 hazardous meat-packing plants from Minnesota to Texas faced a penalty of only $1.5 million in February.
A Packers employee cleaning with limited visibility at the JBS plant in Worthington, Minnesota
Some of them endured chemical burns from powerful detergents and had to clean dangerous carcass-cleaving machines in overnight shifts.
Maki, the coordinator of the league's Child Labor Coalition, said the penalty was too small to deter future abusers.
'You have to put fear into the employers that there are repercussions for hiring children illegally,' Maki said.
'We have to send a powerful message to companies that employ children illegally in dangerous settings must stop, and the way to do that is with really significant fines that actually hurt the company's bottom line.'
Industry experts say the Packers scandal is just the 'tip of the iceberg' of America's child labor crisis.
Federal investigators recorded a massive 37 percent jump in the number of kids working illegally in America's factories, eateries and other workplaces this past year, a DailyMail.com investigation revealed.
Department of Labor inspectors found 3,876 children working in breach of labor rules in the 2022 fiscal year. That includes a worrisome 688 who toiled in hazardous conditions, often involving dangerous equipment — a 26 percent rise on 2021.
Labor officials and experts on child abuses said those figures are only a fraction of how many are truly working in violation of labor rules, which may number in the hundreds of thousands.
Faced with low unemployment and a shortage of adult workers, bosses have turned to teens to fill the gap, experts said. Unscrupulous managers also benefit from the influx of desperate young migrants who need cash and don't ask questions.
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