Brazilian Workers Face Often-fatal Safety Hazards

A Latino worker washes the window of a building in Cambridge, Mass. (NEWz file photo, Eduardo de Oliveira)

Once again, tragedy has knocked on the door of a Brazilian family in Massachusetts.  

In the early morning of Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2008, Romulo Santos was killed after being electrocuted on the job.  He was working on an overnight construction project at a Wal-Mart store in Walpole, Mass.

The Brazilian Times reported that at about 1 a.m., Santos, 47, was trying to reconnect wires. In the process of trying to reconnect them, an electrical discharge was released, and Santos was electrocuted to death.  

Santos’ death adds to a list of work-related fatal accidents in Massachusetts involving immigrants from Brazil.

According to a study by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, 15 Brazilian workers lost their lives while at work, from 1999 to 2007.  All of these victims were male, between 18 and 59 years of age, and more than half (56 percent) worked in construction.

Among workers from all Latin America, the ACL-CIO union reported in 2006 that the number of fatalities at the workplace nationally was the highest ever reported. There were 990 deaths that year, a jump of seven percent over 2005.

“In general, deaths by electrocution happen because of lack of training or for not wearing crucial equipment at work,” said Eduardo Siqueira, an assistant professor at University of Massachusetts in Lowell and president of the board of directors of the Brazilian Immigrant Center, a nonprofit based in Allston, Mass.

Siqueira is also the general coordinator of “Projeto Parceria” (or Partnership Project), a program funded by the National Institute of Health Sciences that has trained 200 immigrant construction workers about work environment safety during a two-year period.

“We know that around the world, construction sites and mines are among the places where most workplace deaths occur. But we have to work harder to avoid seeing highly-preventable deaths, like electrocution. Brazilian construction workers would not die at work if their employers complied with mandatory construction safety and health standards,” said Siqueira.

“Unfortunately one more construction worker died due to a highly preventable cause. Brazilians would not die at work if their employers complied with mandatory, construction safety and health standards,” he added.

The Walpole Police Department referred all journalists to the office of William R. Keating, the district attorney for Norfolk Country, the region in which Santos' death occurred. 

Although Keating's investigation of the death was not complete as of last week, his office has already ruled out any foul play. Massachusetts in one of a few states in the country that investigates all deaths that have occurred outside of hospital settings.

Keating's press officer, David Traub, confirmed that Santos died as a result of electrocution, but he said that the medical examiner’s office has yet to release the official cause of death.

Traub also said that Santos’ family in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has been contacted already.

Santos did not have family members in the US and, according to the Brazilian Times, he had been living in the country for the past five years. Santos was well known in Somerville, Mass., among the Brazililan community there, although whether he lived in that area was unknown at press time.

Authorities had not released the name of Santos' employer at press time.  But Traub confirmed that at least two subcontractor companies were hired to perform construction services for the Wal-Mart where Santos died.

From 1991, when the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Occupational Health Surveillance Program (OHSP) first began tracking fatal work-related injuries, through 1998, no deaths of Brazilian-born workers were recorded. 

Although the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health has not released any details of its investigation of Santos' death, Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, MassCOSH’s executive director, issued the following statement:

“Workers should be able to go to work and return home with their lives and limbs intact.  We don’t yet know the details of this tragic situation, but it’s safe to say that exposing a laborer to live electricity in the middle of the night is a recipe for disaster.”

Siqueira is waiting for a grant from the state's Occupational Safety and Health administration to start 10-hour workplace-safety training for immigrant construction workers.  In addition,  two workers, who will act as safety-standards coaches, will receive 40-hour-training.

But the task of training immigrant workers is not an easy one.   Workers have dropped out of previous training session due to busy schedules.  Even those in paid safety-related positions, such as the two coaches in Siqueira's grant-funded project, frequently drop out of sessions as demands from their busy schedules increase.
  
“That’s why we organize workshops on Friday and Saturday nights. What’s more important is to keep the word of mouth about safety going. Or do we want to mourn someone from time to time?”

source:  EthnicNEWz.org

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Job-Injury Fatality Rates Higher for Latino Workers Than for Others