Copyright 2004 San Antonio Express-News

October 14, 2004, Thursday , METRO

SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. 1C

LENGTH: 948 words

HEADLINE: SAFETY WATCH ; Initiatives help cut deaths of Hispanic construction workers.

BYLINE: Aissatou Sidime

BODY: After an employee was killed by a broken scoop on a heavy-equipment excavator while working on a sewer pipe in 2000, Ellis & Ellis Inc. construction company hired a safety consultant to point out its weaknesses.

Laredo-based Ellis & Ellis began tracking daily inspections of equipment, recalculated and clearly marked acceptable weight limits on equipment, and took extra precautions to protect workers from falling items, according to government records.

It's since prevented similar accidents.

For the company - which did not return calls about the incident - the death was a costly wake-up call. But thanks to recent industry and government initiatives, it's one that fewer companies are facing.

After several years of rising death rates among Hispanic workers, their deaths seem firmly on the decline.

For the first time in 11 years, deaths among foreign-born Hispanic workers dropped, falling to 519 last year from a peak of 578 in 2002, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Likewise, deaths for all Hispanic workers declined for the second consecutive year, to 791 deaths, after six years of increases.

That's significant in Texas because a large portion of construction workers are Hispanic. In fact, an estimated 60 percent of new Hispanic immigrants work in construction and landscaping.

Construction workers in Texas and the Western states have long been predominantly Hispanic. But they began dying at faster rates than other ethnic groups and the national average in the mid-1990s.

Contractors who were aggressive about stemming the problem saw immediate improvements.

SpawGlass Contractors Inc., which has 75 hourly workers in San Antonio, cut its injuries and workers' compensation premiums by two-thirds by holding required weekly safety training in Spanish.

It also placed easily identifiable safety coordinators at each job site and instituted cash incentives for avoiding accidents. Every hourly employee gets a crisp $50 bill once a quarter if the company has no accident that results in time away.

"It makes everybody look out for each other because everyone else's safety affects a worker's $50 payment," said SpawGlass Vice President Chuck Calvin.

Nevertheless, many builders, subcontractors and anti-immigration advocates fought greater government safety enforcement until three years ago.

Then court rulings made it easier for Occupation Safety and Health Administration inspectors to walk onto job sites uninvited if they observe and document unsafe work practices, said Rupert Chavez, head of OSHA's new San Antonio office.

Now seven OSHA compliance officers carry digital cameras when they drive by San Antonio job sites, just in case they see hazards.

With the major obstacles gone, the Labor Department decided to change the way safety was taught.

Accidents often occurred if safety coordinators spoke English while the work crews spoke mainly Spanish. Plus, construction terms were too complex, given that Mexican immigrants average about a third-grade education, said John Miles, OSHA's regional administrator in Dallas.

So OSHA began offering free safety training in Spanish in 2001 through the Texas Engineering Extension Service.

The effect quickly multiplied. The 103 construction supervisors who took the course trained more than 4,000 workers, said Lisa London of TEEX.

Next, OSHA added a Spanish page to its Web site and an online Spanish-English glossary of common construction terms.

Just offering classes and materials wasn't enough. Safety officials realized that they had to overcome workers' fears of government agencies to get accurate information on safety hazards and to provide training where needed.

The Labor Department approached the Mexican Consulate in Houston about setting up a toll-free hotline that workers could use to anonymously report hazards or accidents at their job sites. It's gotten so many calls that the hotline will be extended nationwide.

Other initiatives took a lesson from Arizona, where that state cut its high Hispanic worker death rate to one of the lowest nationwide by retraining its accident investigators. They now confront common worker misconceptions before they start an investigation.

"Many co-workers worry about keeping the dead or injured worker's family members from getting benefits if they say the person was horsing around at work or not wearing a hard hat," said Julie Pace, a partner at Stinson Morrison Hecker, a Phoenix-based law firm that specializes in OSHA safety standards. "So we tell folks right away now that the benefits are guaranteed."

Still, there are holes in the industry-OSHA strategy.

Hundreds of San Antonio's small residential construction crews that work as independent contractors rarely get more than 10 hours of OSHA safety training, said OSHA's Chavez.

The Labor Department hopes to reach them with pictures of construction hazards that trainers will be able to download and use in on-the-job training.

Industry officials say customers can play one of the biggest roles in improving safety.

For example, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport required contractors to quintuple minimum training requirements for every worker on the job site. The airport had the contractors include the cost of the extra training in their bids for the job.

As a result, airport spokesman Steve Roth said, the complex has had one-eighth of the typical serious injuries among the 13,500-plus construction workers involved in a five-year expansion.

asidime@express-news.net

GRAPHIC: 1-3) PHOTOS: PHOTOS BY JERRY LARA/STAFF ; 4) GRAPHIC: JAMES HENDRICKS/STAFF : 1) SpawGlass Contractors safety inspector Roger Dean Weber goes on his weekly rounds of the Bulverde Creek Elementary construction site. The company cut its injuries and workers' compensation premiums by two-thirds with required safety training in Spanish. ; 2) Safety caps are placed on rebar for the protection of workers such as Francisco Ibarra, a SpawGlass carpenter. The company offers employees cash incentives for avoiding accidents. ; 3) SpawGlass safety inspector Roger Dean Weber checks the condition of an electrical extension cord. ; 4) Fatal work injuries (Chart)

LOAD-DATE: October 14, 2004