Author:
tony morejon
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Date Posted: 11:35:41 05/14/02 Tue
This chilling article ran in the St. Pete Times on April 8th, 2002. It was written by Alicia Caldwell.
Sorry i missed sending it out sooner.
Dangerous jobs take toll on Hispanics
In disproportionate numbers, they are injured and killed as their rights are ignored by bosses.
By ALICIA CALDWELL, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 8, 2002
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The Paramo brothers came to Florida from Mexico to work in construction.
Three of them -- Antonio, Miguel and Fernando -- were working as pipe layers on a job near Venice one morning late last month.
A plug or a valve burst and 17-year-old Fernando was overcome by noxious gas. Miguel, 33, got his brother out, but became trapped as the pipe filled with water. Antonio, 20, tied a rope around himself and plunged into the pipe. He was able to drag Miguel out, but the older brother died.
"We realize God does everything for a reason, and we're just trying to find that reason," Carlos Paramo, a fourth brother, said through an interpreter.
Hispanic workers across Florida -- and across the country -- are dying on the job at rates that outstrip their proportion of the work force. Hispanic worker deaths more than doubled in Florida between 1992 and 2000. The toll reached 75 in 2000, which was 23 percent of worker deaths statewide although Hispanics made up only 18 percent of the work force.
The reason is both simple and complex: Hispanics, many of whom don't speak English and are here illegally, are working the most dangerous, lowest-paying and dirtiest jobs. Their fates are wrapped up in big-picture political and economic situations that drive them here from Latin America, largely Mexico, to take the jobs once held by African-Americans. The exodus has helped make Hispanics the state's largest minority.
In Florida, the higher-paying jobs they can get are in construction, statistically the most dangerous occupation. Typical injuries include falling from roofs or scaffolding, electrocution and collapses of structures and cave-ins.
"A long time ago, it used to be the Irish and Polish and Italians," said Guy Perenich, a Clearwater personal injury lawyer for 47 years, who of late has seen more Hispanic clients. "Now, it's the Hispanics. They are the ones on the lowest rung of our country's economic ladder and they're willing to do the heavy, dirty work that no one else is willing to do. They ride their bicycles to work. They don't know the language. These people can be total and complete victims."
At the heart of the situation is a basic power inequity: Hispanic workers, many of them undocumented, are drawn, even enticed to this country by the promise of what they consider high wages. Wages vary widely by employer and region, but those in the business say undocumented Hispanics typically make $12 an hour for carpentry -- a bargain considering union carpenters make $20 an hour counting benefits.
Undocumented Hispanics cannot complain about poor conditions and unfair treatment for fear of deportation. Their difficulties are magnified in Florida, an immigrant magnet: Nationally, Hispanic worker deaths have increased by 53 percent from 1992 to 2000, but in Florida, they've gone up 134 percent.
"Any time you're dealing with people who are scared to death, you can take advantage of them," said Bobby McCoy, an organizer for the Central/North Florida Carpenters Regional Council, based in Tampa. "They (construction companies) don't allow them to go to the doctor's office. They don't pay them. It happens over and over and over."
McCoy said union organizers used to call immigration authorities when they would go to a job site and find it full of workers they suspected were illegals.
Now, he said, they're taking a different approach; they're trying to recruit them. McCoy goes to community events and to apartments crammed to the rafters with workers drawn here by what they consider extremely high wages -- an hour's wages in Florida are a day's paycheck in Mexico. He offers to work out disputes with employers.
McCoy tells a story about a Mexican man living in Tampa, 23 years old, who fell from scaffolding at an Orlando construction site this fall. The worker was taken by helicopter to a hospital, where doctors found he had three broken vertebrae. The man went home to recover, and within three days, a foreman went to his home to get him back on the job. The company didn't want to have to pay disability and risk insurance rate increases, McCoy said.
"He spoke no English and had no idea what his rights were as a worker in this country," McCoy said.
That is something that Lynn Peggs Nunez encounters frequently. As coordinator of Hispanic services for the YWCA of Tampa Bay, she tries to help Hispanics who are being taken advantage of. Last week, a Clearwater man, an undocumented Mexican, came to her office to talk about how to get back wages from a construction job.
The 28-year-old man was told to use an old power saw with a wobbly blade as he cut wooden stakes for a road-building job. He knew it wasn't safe, but he didn't have any choice. He said he had entered the country illegally several years ago and learned to endure conditions that appeared dangerous to keep jobs. The saw kicked back on him, severing tendons in his right hand.
He was taken to a clinic and waited hours before receiving pain medication. It was 14 hours, he said, before he was taken to a hospital for surgery. After that, the construction company only paid him half the disability pay to which he later found he was entitled.
The man, who has a wife and two children, embodies the conditions that have created what government officials, safety experts and community advocates are calling a crisis.
"Workers are being forced to accept these conditions even if they are deplorable and life-threatening," said Marielena Hincapie, a staff member of the National Immigration Law Center in Oakland, Calif.
Deaths of Hispanics in construction jobs have increased precipitously in Florida. In 1992, four Hispanic construction workers died, accounting for 8 percent of construction deaths. In 2000, 20 Hispanic construction workers died, accounting for 25 percent of construction deaths. Agricultural jobs, filled in Florida largely by Hispanics, also were deadly for the ethnic group.
The risk for Hispanics in construction jobs is reflected in national numbers. Last August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that fatal injuries among Hispanics were up sharply between 1999 and 2000, from 730 to 815. The increase was led by a 24 percent jump in Hispanic construction fatalities.
Hispanic immigrants will do the jobs, said Tony Morejon, because they have no choice.
"For them, necessity is the mother of job selection," said Morejon, the Hispanic affairs liaison for Hillsborough County.
And there are a lot more Hispanics here than ever before, according to census figures. In the past decade, the state's Hispanic population increased 70 percent, and its foreign-born population went up 66 percent. Of the foreign-born, nearly 75 percent are Latin American.
Francisco Rivera, a senior lawyer for the Florida Department of Labor, said the state's economic dynamic has changed in the past 30 years. It used to be, he said, that African-Americans occupied the lowest economic rung. They used to do the agricultural and construction jobs that no one else would take at that pay. Now, he said, it's the Hispanics.
"It's a complete change in the work force," he said.
The Florida Home Builders Association, said public affairs director Ian Smith, offers safety courses, but have not targeted Hispanic workers. The association represents 15,000 corporate members in the residential construction industry.
"It isn't anything that we've necessarily paid any special attention to," Smith said. "I'm not sure it's being tracked."
However, the vulnerability of Hispanic workers has caught the attention of Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials, who went before Congress in February to address what is being called a crisis by Hispanic advocates.
John L. Henshaw, director of OSHA, told members of a U.S. Senate subcommittee that Hispanics are disproportionately employed in the more dangerous industries.
Henshaw noted the "extremely high number" of construction fatalities in South Florida, and said the agency is addressing it by offering construction classes in the Fort Lauderdale area and meeting with various Hispanic worker organizations.
However, those who work with local Mexicans and Puerto Ricans -- translating for them, helping them get health care and resolving disputes with employers -- say there are larger forces at work.
"They don't have the skills and language to get the better jobs," said Alex Emmanuelli, a Hispanic activist who works out of Clearwater. "They will do those dangerous jobs because they have no choice. They are thankful to get a job."
-- Chief editorial assistant Alicia Olazabal contributed to this report.
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