We say, when someone manages to avoid accountability for bad behaviour, that they are “getting away with murder.” It’s not just a metaphor. One of the defining characteristics of class society is that those who squat like malevolent toads at the top of the economy and government can often literally get away with killing the rest of us. This socially mandated slaughter can range from the murder of civilians in war time, blandly dismissed as collateral damage in conflicts from Gaza to Ukraine, to frequent police killings of poor and dark-skinned victims on the streets, to the ongoing “butcher’s bill” of workplace deaths caused by management negligence and failed or non-existent safety regulations.
According to the International Labour Organization, nearly three million workers die every year around the world due to work-related accidents and disease, an increase of more than five per cent compared to 2015.
In the US, as the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) recently noted, these deaths and injuries often fall most heavily on marginalized and racialized workers. The national labour organization notes that: “The Black worker fatality rate of 4.0 per 100,000 workers increased sharply in 2021 from 3.5 in 2020; this rate is now the highest in more than a decade.
- 653 Black workers died on the job, the highest number in at least 19 years.
- The Latino fatality rate is still disproportionate to the overall job fatality rate, at 4.5 per 100,000 workers in 2021—25% higher than the national average, and marking a 13% increase over the past decade.
- The number of Latino worker deaths in 2021 increased slightly from the previous year: 1,130 deaths in 2021, compared with 1,072 in 2020. Of those who died in 2021, 64% were immigrants.”
In Canada, according to the latest available statistics from the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada , workplace injuries increased by nine percent from 253,397 in 2020 to 277,225 in 2021. Officially, 1,081 workers were killed on the job in the latter year. In 2022 the reported number of Canadian workplace deaths, almost certainly an undercount, came to 993. These numbers reflect a system that consistently allows businesses to put profit over safety, under regulates workplaces and allows the annual carnage to continue. It makes the phrase “making a killing in business” horribly appropriate.
April is a good time to reflect on these tragedies. On April 24 this year, we observed the 11th anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse, a disaster in Bangladesh tied directly to management negligence. Over 1,100 workers died when the factory collapsed and burned.
Meanwhile the Canadian government has made a pious statement about the Rana deaths and Canada’s concern for worker safety around the world, and on April 28 Canada joined 100 other countries in celebrating an International Day of Mourning for worker deaths and injuries. But the profit- driven death toll continues only partially abated, if at all.
There have been some signs of real progress on this front, mainly worker-led, but unnecessary worker deaths and injuries continue to occur by the millions around the world. In the wake of the Rana Plaza deaths and a vigorous international campaign, led by organized labour, two agreements, the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry have been created that go some distance toward holding international companies accountable for safety conditions in the mainly third world factories that make up their supply chains.
Meanwhile, late in April, the European Union is reportedly on the brink of adopting a watered-down version of a statement that would impose eventual sanctions of some of the firms doing business in EU countries for failures to protect human rights in their supply chains. Under corporate pressure, the original EU statement has suffered considerable dilution and will cover less than one per cent of the companies doing business in the EU, and that only after five years from adoption.
This illustrates the unpleasant truth that the business class will sometimes yield to popular pressure and allow governments to adopt legislation that purports to address the issue of lethal workplaces but will always be followed up by delays and disinterest in implementation.
Canada has experienced exactly this dynamic in the wake of the 1992 Westray mine deaths in Nova Scotia. Only adopted after more than a decade of labour campaigning, the Westray Act was designed to hold criminally negligent employers accountable, but between 2004 and 2022, only 23 cases were filed under the Act, and only two individuals and seven corporations were convicted, leading to only one prison sentence. One legal observer, Norm Keith, has argued recently that Westray charges became more common in 2023. However, his essay does not cite numbers of prosecutions or sanctions for breaking the law, so it remains to be seen just how substantial these changes are. In the meantime, workers and allies must keep the pressure on legislators and regulators, demanding stronger legislation and more effective enforcement. It is time to insist that the age-old slaughter of the workers to fatten the bottom-line end, once and for all.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
