The Brawler was saddened to read this story about a construction worker who fell down an elevator shaft to his death in the Third Ward.
This (still) unnamed worker's death is the sort of thing that makes the news, a single day story, that no one really remembers a week later. Sadly. It seems they happen often, but you never really know.
How often do Wisconsin workers die on the job? The Brawler did a check and found that between 2000 and 2008, per OSHA, 903 workers died on the job.
The breakdown:
2000: 107
2001: 111
2002: 91
2003: 103
2004: 94
2005: 125
2006: 91
2007: 104
2008: 77
Falls account for a not inconsiderable number of deaths every year:
2000: 7
2001: 12
2002: 7
2003: 16
2004: 10
2005: 20
2006: 13
2007: 11
2008: 7
There's no mention on the OSHA page of the breakdown of the numbers by gender, but I'm guessing the vast majority of the workplace fatalities are male -- the prevalence of men in dangerous jobs is just one way in which males are the disposable sex. Sadly, that angle of the story rarely gets addressed by the media.
Posted by: Jim | January 12, 2010 at 09:44 AM