There are many ways to measure inequality: the wealth gap, the achievement gap, the gender gap. But we face a hidden gap at work everyday—a safety gap, the line that measures our risk of death and injury on the job. And often, the gap tracks the country’s racial divide, with Latino workers on the wrong side.
According to an analysis of federal safety data by Buzzfeed, “between 2010 and 2013, the number of deaths among Latinos in the construction industry rose from 181 to 231. The number of deaths also rose in the industry overall, from 774 to 796. But Latinos account for this rise entirely: during the same period, deaths for non-Latino construction workers fell from 593 to 565.”
So the chances of surviving a day at work may turn on demographics, often at the expense of Latino workers who pay in life and limb.
The reasons are evident on any typical American street, when you take a look at who is doing yard work, stocking supermarket shelves or repairing your neighbor’s roof. Latinos and immigrants tend to work in low-wage, marginal jobs, often under extremely rough physical conditions, and safety risk comes with the territory. Meanwhile, systemic segregation in the labor force may fuel the erosion of labor conditions.
One demographic study found that from 1980 to 2010, the immigrant portion of the “low-skilled” workforce quadrupled to about half, including many undocumented workers, and this demographic shift was accompanied by “a striking deterioration in the working conditions of the low-skill labor market.”
The fallout is not just in the income gap, it is in the risk gap at work as well. Language barriers, economic disadvantage and lack of training are interlocking problems facing low-wage Latino workers, particularly in scarcely regulated jobs like farm work and construction.
And the poorer workers are, the harder it is to lift oneself out of the dirtiest and dangerous tier of the labor force.
As Occupational Safety and Health Administration chief David Michaels told NBC News last year, “There’s a clear correlation between low wage jobs and unsafe jobs…. Workers in low wage jobs are at much greater risk of conditions that will make it impossible for them to live in a healthy way, to earn money for their family, to build middle class lives.”