Fear Keeps Many Quiet About Injuries
They pack chicken pot pies and peel shrimp. They assemble cars, build furniture and paste labels on boxes.
The workers most at risk for repetitive stress injuries are not computer operators but blue-collar packers and assemblers, folks at the lower end of the economic scale for whom a decade of economic prosperity has meant long hours and high production speeds.
Some have learned to work through the pain. Others simply walk away from debilitating jobs. In any case, their reluctance to complain has skewed federal statistics that are now at the heart of a debate over the need for ergonomic regulations, which could be repealed as early as this week.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 1.8 million work-related musculoskeletal disorders, such as tendinitis, carpal tunnel syndrome and back strain, were reported last year, based on samples of workplace injury logs. One-third of those injuries resulted in lost workdays.
But the real numbers are probably far higher. Scores of recent academic studies have found widespread underreporting by workers, many of whom are low-wage immigrants with a limited understanding of what causes their wrists and shoulders to ache and burn.
The true injury rate, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is at least double what the statistics show. And some surveys of assembly line workers have found discrepancies of greater than 10 to 1 between actual and reported injuries.
“We’re talking about a massive disabled population and a health care bill that’s going to come due at some point,” said Charles Richardson, director of the Center for Technology and Work at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
While still high, reported injuries have dropped slightly in recent years--a trend that manufacturers and other business groups cite as proof that the federal rules issued in November are unnecessary.
Those rules would require employers to educate workers about musculoskeletal injuries and to redesign jobs if they cause an injury that results in “days away from work, restricted work, or medical treatment beyond first aid, or the signs or symptoms last for seven or more consecutive days after reporting.”
Certainly, many employers have changed workstations to cut injuries. But interviews with labor activists, attorneys, academic researchers, industrial clinic doctors and workers themselves indicate that there are many other factors at play in the downward trend.
They range from new bonus programs for “injury-free” production lines to changes in workers’ compensation laws that make it more difficult for workers to collect benefits.
But perhaps the most pervasive reason for unreliable injury reporting among low-wage production workers is fear.
“For a lot of these people, English is a second language. They’re not very sophisticated. They’re not paid a lot of money. They don’t understand their rights. They’re generally taken advantage of,” said Robert Palty, an Encino attorney who has won settlements for several injured shrimp workers from a Los Angeles processing plant. “Many of them don’t bother complaining. They quit or they keep their mouths shut.”
Several workers--in chicken and salad processing and in wheel manufacturing--said they continued at their jobs despite painful injuries because they feared they would be fired or branded a troublemaker.
Others said they felt punished for reporting injuries, because they were docked pay while visiting a medical clinic, or because workers’ compensation insurance payments did not cover their full salary during time off.
Some said they chalked the pain up to the cost of a full-time job and only realized the extent of their injuries when they could no longer work.
Among them was Gloria Palomino, an immigrant from Mexico who worked at a Zacky Farms chicken processing plant in Commerce for 21 years until it closed in December. For most of those years, she shot an air gun into chickens on a slaughter line, squeezing the trigger 30 to 40 times a minute.
Her fingers grew swollen and sore; neck pain woke her up at night. She soaked her hands in warm water to open them on cold mornings, and didn’t go a day without prescription-strength Motrin. Years ago, she took her pain to a company-contracted clinic and was forced to rest at home for a week. But Palomino said she collected only about half of her minimum wage pay during that time--not enough to support her family--and learned not to complain.
When the plant closed, she received a week’s severance pay and lost her health insurance. No longer able to afford the prescription-strength pain reliever that had gotten her through most of the last decade, Palomino took over-the-counter remedies and wondered where she could find work now, at 45. “It’s so hard to get out of bed,” she said. “How I battle in the morning to open my hands. Tell me, who will hire me with hands like these?”
On the final day of operation at the slaughter and processing line, dozens of workers gathered around a visiting reporter to complain of injuries. They held up their hands and bared their shoulders as evidence, although musculoskeletal injuries are invisible by nature.
Most said they had complained to supervisors but never officially reported an injury or visited a clinic. And under California workers’ compensation law--which does not recognize injuries reported after notice of a layoff--they were unlikely to collect compensation.
“My bones ache. My hands, my shoulders, my arms, they are all inflamed,” said Marta Barrajas. “I can’t do anything that requires any force.”
Zacky spokesman Royce Peterson questioned the employees’ motives in reporting injuries after the fact. He said that workers were always encouraged to seek medical treatment, and that notices were posted on employee bulletin boards to that effect.
“It sounds like they’ve got an ax to grind,” he said. “The poultry processing industry has a higher-than-average injury rate because of the nature of the job. That plant was probably better than average. I can’t answer whether they chose to report injuries or not.”
At American Racing Equipment in Compton, a worker who loaded aluminum wheels into a stamping machine had similar tales. He asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing his job, although he is represented by a union. “There are many co-workers with back injuries,” the worker said in Spanish. “Some are hurt but keep working. Some just disappear. We don’t complain. One needs the work.”
Company health and safety director Nestor Jimenez said that some jobs had been redesigned in recent years and that injury rates had been reduced as a result. But he added that there was an ongoing tension between his department and production supervisors. “For 10 years, we’ve been hitting them over the head that safety is part of the process,” he said.
At the Fish King processing plant in downtown Los Angeles, Silvia Esquival labeled shipping boxes so fast that her right wrist grew sore and weak and finally useless. So she went to the company-contracted doctor, who gave her anti-inflammatory medicine and told her to keep working, using her left hand instead. She was not paid for the time she took off to report to the clinic.
Esquival said her story discouraged others from complaining. However, company President Dennis Delaye said Fish King is “very sensitive” to ergonomic-related injuries. “We rotate employees. We do whatever we can to minimize these problems.”
Similar complaints from the immigrant-dependent meatpacking industry, which is partly represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers union, helped prompt former Labor Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole to consider developing ergonomic regulations 10 years ago.
In a statement issued Tuesday, UFCW President Doug Dority urged the Senate to keep the regulations in place and spiced his argument with a graphic example from the meatpacking floor.
“Take a knife and make a forceful cutting motion,” he said. “Do the exact same motion again . . . and, again . . . and, again . . . and, again. Make that exact same motion 10,000 times . . . 20,000 times . . . 40,000 to 50,000 times a day. Do it for five or six days a week . . . 50 weeks a year.
“You will find out what happens to your hand, your wrist, your elbow, your shoulder. You won’t be able to pick up your child. You won’t be able to play ball with your kids. You won’t be able to do a hundred simple things that most of us take for granted.”
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Injuries on the Job
Private industries with the highest rates of ergonomic injuries in 1999, per 10,000 full-time workers.
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Industry Incident rate Meatpacking plants 912.5 Motor vehicles and car bodies 685.5 Men’s and boys’ trousers and slacks 405.0 Household refrigerators and freezers 344.4 Poultry slaughtering and processing 337.1 Men’s footwear (except athletic) 329.0 Engine electrical equipment 328.0 Household laundry equipment 324.8 Hats, caps and millinery 301.0 Women’s footwear (except athletic) 256.7
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Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
