Homeowners of Texas - 07/30/10: WORKERS: Construction jobs laced with low pay, injustice, hazards & death

Texas allows unscrupulous and unregulated builders to victimize both homeowners and the workers who work on their homes.

Austin says construction workers must get Rest Breaks and Water

City Council: Employees must get at least 10 minutes of rest for every four hours worked.

SUMMARY: To help address some of the many safety issues described in this collection of articles, the Austin City Council unanimously passed an apparently groundbreaking ordinance requiring that construction workers be granted a rest break of at least 10 minutes for every four hours worked. It also mandates that no construction worker go for more than 31/2 hours without a break. Employers will face fines of up to $500 for each day a violation occurs.

Greg Casar with the Austin-based Workers Defense Project said the group receives about a dozen calls a day from workers who say they either aren't getting paid or are being put in dangerous situations.

HOT president Tom Archer testified in support of the ordinance and dozens of citizens and workers rallied to support it too. Harry Savio testified against it. Savio, executive vice president of the Homebuilders Association of Greater Austin, said the ordinance is flawed and that penalties were too severe. He also complained that it was "hidden on the agenda."

Critics of this ordinance obviously have no concern for worker health safety and may be the very ones hiring undocumented workers as day laborers and then abusing them. Are they relying on the fact that these workers likely won't complain to officials for fear of being deported?

Construction Jobs laced with injustice, hazards and death
HOT applauds and endorses this study, although industry officials dispute its findings

One hundred and forty-two worn pairs of work boots were on display at Austin City Hall on Tuesday, one for each of the construction workers who died on the job in Texas in 2007. Three more pairs had been set aside. They represent the three construction workers who fell to their deaths last week in Austin . A fourth man was injured but survived. They were working on a scaffold outside a high-rise apartment building going up near the University of Texas.

The families of the workers who live in Mexico and Central America have lost loved ones who were the primary wage earners for the families.

Already there are questions about safety. Were the workers wearing harnesses, lifelines or helmets that could have prevented or cushioned their fall, about 11 to 13 stories to the ground, and possibly prevented their deaths? Did they receive the 10-hour OSHA health and safety training (or other instruction) that teaches workers how to avoid injuries on the job? Were the workers trained for scaffold work? Were they pressured to skip breaks or take dangerous shortcuts to meet construction deadlines?

It probably will be months or longer before we know the answers to those questions that are part of an investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). But we don't have to wait that long to know that some things are broken in the construction industry and require immediate attention. And some of those problems are very close to home, according a report, "Building Austin, Building Injustice," by University of Texas researchers and the Workers Defense Project. The report focuses attention on poor work conditions and dangers construction workers daily face on the job.

Some facts in the report grabbed our attention: More workers died in Texas than in any other state in the nation, including California, which had 81 such deaths, according to figures by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Calculated in human terms, that means that a construction worker dies on the job every 2+ days in Texas. There are other findings in the report, the result of surveys of more than 300 Austin construction workers and industry-related data from federal and state agencies, that warrant attention and solutions:

Frank Fuentes of Austin, board chairman of the U.S. Hispanic Contractors Association, noted Hispanic construction workers dominate the industry. It should come as no surprise that many are immigrants. They work hard and, generally, for low wages. Their citizenship status often puts them at-risk of being taken advantage of by unscrupulous contractors.

This newspaper has reported on contractors that have left construction workers in the lurch — without the pay they've earned — upon completion of a job. That's theft. This week, we've run death notices of workers who died on the job.

As noted in the report, many deaths are preventable. Take the case of Omar Puerto, 20, who was electrocuted while painting a remodeled apartment complex in Austin in 2006. He had not been told about the live wire on his job site, which he brushed against while working.

There is a belief that cutting corners on training and safety equipment keep expenses down in construction. We get a cheaper house, right? But building on the cheap has hidden costs in the way of medical expenses paid by taxpayers when uninsured workers are injured or in legal fees that are paid to settle lawsuits. Those costs are passed along to consumers.

And there are the human costs: 142 pairs of boots — plus three. Two days from now, there will be one more pair.

New report shows Austin construction workers face dangers, low pay

Though it robustly feeds the city's growth and economy - generating an estimated $3.5 billion-plus annually in wages alone - Austin's commercial and residential construction industry frequently puts workers' safety, health and financial well-being at risk, according to a study released today by a workers advocacy group.

Combining results from surveys with more than 300 Austin construction workers and industry-related data from federal and state agencies, the 68-page study, "Building Austin, Building Injustice," depicts an industry rampant with poor and dangerous working conditions. While it says that many builders, developers and contractors are model employers, others cut costs by not paying some workers for overtime, not paying some at all, misclassifying others as independent contractors, and by failing to provide proper safety equipment such as harnesses and helmets, violations of federal and state regulations.

In doing so, they shift the toll onto the public when low-wage workers have to depend heavily on government support, hospitals and charities for medical care and to make ends meet, the report said.

Industry representatives who had seen summaries of the study strongly disputed the findings.

"I know of no one, certainly no one active in our association, who speaks out in favor of violating state and federal construction laws," said Harry Savio, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Austin. [HOT: We certainly would not expect a homebuilder association to publically favor violating laws.]

"We recognize the critical need for safety on our job sites," said Phil Thoden, president of the Austin chapter of Associated General Contractors of America. "We employ a full-time safety director to assist members with safety services and offer classes both in Spanish and English. Unfortunately, accidents occur no matter how much precaution is taken."

Release of the study by the Austin-based Workers Defense Project comes on the heels of last week's deaths of three men in a scaffolding collapse at a high-rise apartment construction project near the University of Texas. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating. A spokeswoman said the agency does not comment during an investigation.

The study found that violations of workplace regulations are common in the industry, and federal, state and local governments are either ill-equipped to investigate or lax about enforcement. [HOT: Enforcement would be easier with contractor licensing, as we've proposed.]

"The report is just shocking in the way that it shows how the industry (in Austin) is really rife with these conditions that are pretty deplorable in terms of safety and health issues," said Richard Heyman, a University of Texas professor and an adviser and researcher on the study. A specialist in urban development studies, Heyman said the report reveals systemic, structural failures.

"Employers rely on these kinds of conditions and on the fact that the public will pick up the bill for their lack of ability or lack of willingness to do the right thing," Heyman said.

The report illuminates questionable practices that have have dogged the construction industry nationally. This is the first such study conducted in Austin.

The Workers Defense Project helps low-wage laborers recover unpaid wages and advocates fair working conditions on their behalf. Director Cristina Tzintzun said it undertook the study because the construction industry plays a vital role in the city's economy and because working conditions had never been studied.

According to the report, the construction industry employs more than 50,000 people in the Austin-Round Rock metropolitan area, making it one of the top ten industry employers in the area.

Tzintzun said researchers visited about a hundred commercial and residential building sites in Austin, surveying more than 300 workers and conducting longer interviews with about three dozen workers and employers.

Savio questioned if the study unfairly painted the industry with too broad a brush. Heyman said the methodology was sound. Researchers from the University of Illinois-Chicago also partnered in the study.

Among the major findings:

- One in five construction workers told surveyors they were not always paid for their labor, one in five reported suffering an injury that required medical attention at some point during their careers, and 45 percent earned poverty-level wages.

- While working overtime in the construction industry is common, half of workers who did so reported receiving no overtime pay, a violation of wage and hour laws.

- Nearly four in 10 workers were misclassified as independent contractors, unfairly denying them legal protections to overtime pay, workers' compensation coverage and benefits.

- Sixty-four percent said they had received no basic health and safety training provided by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The training is voluntary.

- An overwhelming majority of workers lacked employer-based health insurance, pensions, sick or vacation days. Only 45 percent of workers said they were covered by workers' compensation coverage. In Texas, employers can opt out of workers' comp.

- Most workers earned $10 an hour. Using federal guidelines, the report calculated a poverty hourly wage of $10.56, based on a family of four.

Drawing on existing data, the report also says that Texas led the nation in construction-related deaths in 2007 with 142 fatalities, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Labor. (Tzintzun said similar data is not available by city.)

But regulation of the industry is weak, the report says. In 2008, Texas had 77 Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigators for its 10.2 million workers, the study says. That is the fourth worst investigators-to-workforce ratio in the country.

According to the report, the state agency that investigates wage and hour violations, the Texas Workforce Commission, has not performed field investigations since 1993, handling complaints by telephone and mail. Such investigations "fail to create an adequate mechanism to address widespread violations and to deter other employers from breaking the law," the study says.

"Whether a field investigation or phone investigation is conducted, the results would still be the same - the type of investigation does not change the facts of the case," said Ann Hatchitt, a spokeswoman for the Texas Workforce Commission.

Hatchitt said it would be cost-prohibitive for the agency's 23 staff investigators to travel across the state to investigate 15,000 to 20,000 wage claims a year. She said that in the past six years, the Texas Workforce Commission Labor Law and Wage Claims Department helped more than 100,000 Texas workers recover more than $23 million in wages.

"As a whole we think Texas needs to be tougher on employers who cheat the system and hurt workers and in the process undercut good businesses that abide by the law," said Tzintzun.

The City of Austin also comes in for criticism. The study found that in the past five years, the city collected no fines from 83 contractors who violated mandates on publicly funded construction sites requiring them to pay higher "prevailing wages."

The city's Contract Land and Management office said 16 contractors employing 83 workers violated the regulations and that all contractors ultimately corrected the wage deficiencies. The office said it is standard for the city to withhold payment to contractors until prevailing wage requirements are met.

The report's authors call on policymakers and employers to do more to decrease the number of deaths in the industry and to promote safe, humane working conditions, as well as to ensure strict enforcement against wage theft. When hiring subcontractors, general contractors should take into account working conditions, including wage theft.

Savio said he interpreted that to mean that builders should exert more direct control over subcontractors.

"The problem is there's all kinds of (federal and state) rules saying you can't do that, that if you exert too much direct control over subcontractors, they then become your employees," Savio said. "There are legal issues with us trying to do that."

Savio said most builders assocations offer their workers training, and wage theft hurts everyone in the industry.

"If I'm a reputable builder and I have reputable subcontractors paying their guys and they're competing against fly-by-night con men, it disrupts the whole economic system," Savio said. He said that 80 percent of new homes in the Austin market are built by regional and national builders that "cannot afford to flaunt the law."

About the report

According to researchers, "Building Austin, Building Injustice" is the result of 312 surveys of workers at commercial and residential construction sites as well as 37 interviews with workers, developers, homebuilders, general contractors and subcontractors, conducted over several months beginning in late 2008. Researchers visited about a hundred job sites selected at random. In addition, the report cites industry-related data from the U.S. Census, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Department of Labor and Texas Workforce Commission.

Study details hazards faced by Austin construction workers

When three workers lost their lives on West Campus in early June, few knew it would be a tragic punctuation to report released Tuesday.

Dozens of construction workers chose to miss a day of wages to be on the steps at Austin City Hall Tuesday.

"When we undertook this study at Workers Defense Project we knew that we would find abuses in the industry, but even we were shocked to find out just how commonplace illegal workplace practices in the construction industry are here in Austin," said Christina Tzintzun, Workers Defense Project.

The most alarming statistic, according to the Workers Defense Project, is that a construction worker dies on the job in Texas every two and a half days.

"Literally folks think about that, it takes on average about three days to have a funeral and a proper burial, we cannot even respect and honor a person before another one dies, because every two and a half days we are dealing with this issue again and again," said Austin City Councilmember Mike Martinez.

The report comes a week after three workers died after falling several stories from scaffolding perched alongside the construction site for the 21 Rio Grande apartments. Tuesday, 142 pairs of construction boots were lined up to remember all the construction workers who lost their lives in Texas during 2007. The report also claims nearly half of construction workers earn poverty level wages and one in five report being denied payment for their work.

"I am angry and I am disappointed that so many companies like these do not care for the safety of construction workers, something needs to change," said Joe Charlez, 14-year construction worker.

Councilmember Martinez says state and federal laws must be enforced at the worksite.

"For the little savings that an employer might gain by not paying that wage and by not providing that benefit cost the rest of the community exponentially," he said.

Martinez says when law breaking companies deny workers pay and benefits it creates a vicious cycle whereby the workers have to turn to social services and the local government for help -- which ends up costing all taxpayers.

Every 2½ days a construction worker dies on the job in Texas.

On Tuesday, just days after three construction workers fell to their deaths in Austin, a group of workers gathered outside City Hall there to call for better working conditions in the industry. They brought with them 142 pairs of workers boots, symbolizing the number of workers who died in construction accidents in the state in 2007.

Despite the recession, the construction industry is booming in Texas, but human rights groups point out that the state's lax enforcement of labor and safety regulations is exacting a huge price on workers. According to a new study by the Workers Defense Project, an Austin-based labor advocacy group, Texas now holds the title as the deadliest state in the country for construction workers, with nearly twice as many deaths as any other state.

The report, "Building Austin, Building Injustice," examined the poor and dangerous working conditions prevalent in the construction industry in Texas. It found thatTexas fails to guarantee even the most basic safety and labor protections.

For instance, the report notes that many workers are forced to endure unsafe conditions and work in temperatures up to 112 degrees F. and overtime hours without rest breaks. Nearly two-thirds of the workers surveyed said they didn't even receive basic safety training before getting on the work site.

The researchers surveyed more than 300 Austin construction workers, but the report also details trends from across the state. Some further highlights from the report:

45% of surveyed construction workers earned poverty level wages, while one in five workers reported being denied payment for their construction work.
50% of construction workers reported not being paid overtime, and for many this resulted in the inability to pay for food and housing.
1 in 5 surveyed workers suffered a workplace injury that required medical attention.
64% of surveyed workers lacked basic health and safety training. Many were forced to provide their own safety equipment, with 47% of residential construction workers providing their own hard hats and safety belts.
Employers frequently misclassified workers as independent contractors instead of employees, thus stripping them of their rights to overtime pay, workers' compensation coverage and benefits.

The Workers Defense report also found that violations of workplace regulations are routine and often go unnoticed due to a lack of inspectors, with state as well as federal agencies ill-equipped to investigate or lax about enforcement.

In fact, most of the surveyed workers had never heard of government regulatory agencies like the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration or the Texas Workforce Commission, which has not performed field investigations since 1993.

A National Problem

While Texas has some of the worst construction job-related death rates, issues of workplace safety are a growing concern across the nation.

A report released in April by the AFL-CIO found that on any given day 15 working people will be killed on the job as a result of workplace injuries and disease. In 2007, close to 6,000 workers lost their lives on the job and more than 4 million other workers were hurt or made ill, according to AFL-CIO's Death on the Job 2009.

Labor advocates argue that little has been done in recent years at the federal level to improve job safety and protect workers. Many advocates are now looking to the Obama administration to strengthen the capacity of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

OSHA's ability to provide protection to workers has greatly diminished over the years. Advocates point out that under the Bush administration the safety agency was systematically stripped of its enforcement apparatus and aligned with business interests. The AFL-CIO report notes that years of budget cuts and inadequate funding crippled the agency's ability to adequately enforce workplace safety standards.

The Texas Observer provided this background on the shrinking of OSHA under the last Republican presidencies:

Safety inspections were a casualty of the government-shrinking ideology that prevailed in Washington following Ronald Reagan's election until the current economic crisis. Especially during George W. Bush's administration, the emphasis shifted from enforcement to voluntary compliance. Meanwhile, the ranks of OSHA inspectors have been thinning for years. In 1980, there were 1,469 -- 14.9 per million workers. By 2007, there were just 948 OSHA inspectors nationwide -- 6.4 for every million workers, the lowest level in the agency's history.

Routinely underfunded, understaffed and overwhelmed, OSHA currently has the ability to inspect every workplace only once every 137 years on average. Several of the states with the worst OSHA safety inspection rates are in the South. According to the AFL-CIO report, in several Southern states it would take 150 years or more for OSHA to pay a single visit to each workplace: 303 years in Arkansas, 259 years in Florida, 184 years in Georgia and 173 years in Louisiana.

Texas itself has the second-lowest number of OSHA inspectors in the nation after Florida. As as the Workers Defense report pointed out:

[The] United Nations' International Labor Organization recommends that 1,023 OSHA inspectors are needed to adequately investigate the number of worksites in Texas, yet in 2008 the state operated with only 77 inspectors to cover over 10,231,906 workers.

Outcry fueled by claims of lax safety measures, suspect lending practices

Almost 100 residential construction workers and members of the Laborers’ International Union of North America gathered outside KB Home’s regional office yesterday to protest the company’s building practices.

Using banners, flyers and a giant inflatable pig, protesters lined the parking lot of KB’s office in an effort to bring awareness to decisions that have caused many people to resort to foreclosure.

In April and May of this year, class-action complaints were filed against KB Home in California and Arizona, respectively. The class-action complaints filed allege that KB Home is creating a “criminal enterprise” with its affiliates, Countrywide and LandSafe, to inflate appraisals, as well as using “scare tactics” to frighten buyers on the dangers of using outside lenders to prevent comparison shopping. KB Home is one of the nation’s largest home builders, according to the suit.

In Austin, protestors rallied against KB Home’s alleged failure to account for workers’ safety and welfare and against business practices that have approved homeowners for mortgages they were not qualified for.

Dawn Page, spokeswoman for the Laborers International Union of North America, said the protest is an effort to hold KB Home accountable amid a suffering housing market and 32 percent decline in home value.

“Based on my experience from working on the West Coast, KB Home does the same thing in every city they build, and it’s not just Texas,” Page said. “A lot of the homes they’ve constructed have defects, and in many locations, they qualify people for homes that can’t afford them - so basically in two years homeowners find themselves in a situation where their second mortgage interest goes up and they wind up going into foreclosure or walking away from their homes.”

Among the residential construction workers at the protest was Jose Paredes, who used to work for KB Home under a contracting company. Paredes said that this protest is not only an indictment of KB offices in Texas.

“From my experience, I’ve seen the type of home they build,” Paredes said. “Some of the things they’ve done involve taking a lot of shortcuts, not reinforcing safety rules for the work sites, not providing water and ice for the workers, working the workers long hours during the day and not paying the whole amount for overtime.”

While many of the people at the protest claimed to be victims of foreclosure, others said they were there for moral support. Paul Price said he is fortunate to have never faced foreclosure but has worked with hundreds of homeowners across the West Coast who have not been as lucky.

“I really want to see reform in the home-building industry,” Price said. “It’s critical that the people that brought the economy of the states down by writing subprime mortgages and putting people in homes they couldn’t afford are held accountable for their actions.”

READER COMMENTS:

Wayne Caswell said:
Texas laws allow builders to do almost anything they want without accountability. The large and vertically integrated volume builders have a profit incentive to make sub-prime loans to unqualified buyers, inflate appraisals, conceal construction defects, and falsify inspection reports. This will continue as long as they are allowed to own finance companies (mortgage, title & insurance) and then offload their risks by reselling the loans they make to 3rd parties as mortgage-backed securities.

As for the cause of defects, I wonder what labor unions think about contractor licensing and whether they’d support licensing of framers, roofers and foundation companies like we already have for electricians and plumbers. The concept can elevate those professions but may be viewed as an attack on day labor. Builders often pickup workers (anyone who looks like they can swing a hammer) at Home Depot or other day labor sites without knowing their qualifications or if they can read plans in English. And without bilingual supervision can we expect anything but defects. On one hand we want homes built by skilled craftsmen and we want them paid and treated fairly, but on the other hand we want inexpensive (i.e. cheap) housing. That’s the dilemma facing Homeowners of Texas, a nonprofit fighting for regulatory reform of home building on behalf of consumers. Comments here and visits to our website are welcome.

When a House Is Not a Home

One sign that the housing market is still in pretty bad shape is that when protesters show up at a home builder's office doorstep – it's no longer there. That's what happened Monday for a group of union activists who wanted to send a message to Centex Homes, heretofore locally headquartered out on Highway 183 North. At least, that's where it was until last weekend, when the company's recent merger with Michigan-based Pulte Homes resulted in the closing of the Austin administration office. Centex management has scurried back to Dallas – layoffs and consolidation continue under the Pulte Homes umbrella, now the biggest national home builder after the August $1.4 billion stock deal.

The protesters – folks from the national Laborers' International Union of North America [LiUNA] as well as the Austin-based Workers Defense Project – were hoping to demand that Centex take responsibility for paying some construction workers who have been stiffed by Centex subcontractors. At the last minute, the protest was shifted to a nearby sales office, on the development site where the work actually occurred – surprise, no response from Centex.

It was pretty much the same story the next day in Dallas, where the Alliance for Home Buyer Justice campaign took its national pilgrimage to the Centex headquarters there (now a subsidiary of Pulte), demanding that the company "take responsibility" for its role in the national financial crisis. Reportedly, the group chanted outside the building, inflated a pig balloon, and then marched into the Centex offices – where they were quickly escorted out again by security cops. But maybe, just maybe, they planted a small public seed of doubt about the roles that huge corporate builders now play in the national housing market.
Baiting the Gorilla

The actions were all part of LIUNA's Build America So America Works tour that began in Los Angeles Dec. 1 and runs through 10 cities in all, ending next week at Pulte's national headquarters outside Detroit, in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. The union, which claims 500,000 members nationally, has put together a coalition of workers, homeowners' associations, and other groups to press the industry to make changes in its building, marketing, and employment practices. They've targeted Pulte as what the business press now calls the "800-pound gorilla" in the new homes market – the Centex merger, while smaller companies have been declaring bankruptcy, suggests Pulte is trying to weather the economic storm by expansion and forging a larger market share.

More specifically, the campaign charges: "With subprime and exotic mortgages, Pulte victimized homebuyers. With its employment practices, Pulte victimized its workers. Pulte made record profits off the crisis, and even now, the multi-billion dollar corporation is taking $450 million in taxpayer-funded bailouts." Pulte has rejected LIUNA's claims, dismissing them as simply the rhetoric fueling a nationwide union organizing campaign. A St. Louis Pulte subsidiary has sued the union after a protest there, charging physical harassment and violation of labor laws. (St. Louis is the Thursday stop on this week's campaign.)
Building a Bigger Bubble

What's most striking about the campaign is its fledgling attempt to forge an alliance between construction workers, often at the bottom of the industrial labor chain, and new homebuyers, generally much more affluent and arguably even on the other side of the economic tug-of-war – boosting labor costs on the construction end inevitably means higher prices on the consumer side. That inherent tension was evident Monday night in the closing event at a Downtown hotel (attended mostly by tour participants), where a large panel of speakers juxtaposed homeowners' associations and lobbying groups with Hispanic construction workers. The common interest, the speakers argued, was to reform the home building industry to achieve: 1) fairer labor practices; 2) affordable, sustainable, and independent mortgage policies; 3) sound construction and defect standards; and 4) sustainable, public-interest development policies that serve the whole community interest, not just the companies' and stockholders' bottom line.

It's a sizable and complex menu, and when asked what they are hoping to accomplish in specific terms, the speakers most often cited "getting home builders to accept accountability" as a catch-all for a whole range of changes that would vary from state to state – most lamentably in Texas, where consumer protections are so poor the homeowners' lobby cites as its most important recent victory the Lege decision to abolish the agency supposedly created to protect homebuyers' interests. The Texas Residential Construction Commission was so hopelessly compromised by industry influence that the fiction of public interest couldn't be sustained. (Labor protections in Texas, of course, are essentially nonexistent.)

Monday night's anecdotal testimony ranged from construction workers denied their lawful wages to self-described "upscale" homeowners complaining that their wealthy subdivisions were being financially undermined by cheaper homes on smaller lots – not necessarily people in the same social action universe. (Pulte and Centex actually got off fairly easy; the evening's most popular whipping boy was KB Homes.)

Most illuminating was the information that the biggest home builders have essentially been transformed into huge financing companies, managing every aspect of the initial purchase, padding the loan deals with fees and restrictions – and then remarketing the often-subprime loans as "mortgage securities" to third parties, thereby washing their hands of the construction transaction and also contributing their enormous share to the instability of the financial markets.

When the housing bubble inevitably burst, the homeowners and workers at the bottom were left holding the rubble, and major players like Pulte are now buying up the remaining pieces for the next expansionist real estate cycle. The most stunning story was out of Buckeye, Ariz. – the president of a homeowners' association there said that of 311 homes in his development, more than 150 [over 50%] are foreclosed or abandoned. That's a dire story no doubt repeated across the country, and it's difficult to imagine a fix that doesn't involve massive, federally subsidized refinancing of those mortgages to restabilize those communities.

Oh, wait – that's why we gave the banks all that bailout money. So they could reinvest in our communities and stave off financial collapse. Of course, from their perspective and that of the home building/financing giants, one man's collapse is another man's – or corporation's – opportunity.

After a six-month investigation, federal regulators have proposed nearly $160,000 in fines against four contractors involved in construction of a West Campus high-rise where three workers fell to their deaths after a June scaffolding collapse.

[HOT: Fines alone won't prevent future abuses since thay are often viewed as a "cost of business." Enforcement of regulations should include criminal penalties and the ability to prevent continued work on projects.]

The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced a number of citations against the builders, alleging unsafe conditions and practices at the worksite of 21 Rio, a luxury apartment building near the University of Texas campus that has since been completed.

"If scaffolding parts had been inspected and replaced or repaired as needed, it is possible that this tragic accident and loss of life could have been avoided," Eric Harbin, OSHA's Austin director, said in a written statement.

On June 10, Raudel Ramirez Camacho, 27, of Mexico and Wilson Joel Irias Cerritos, 30, and Jesus Angel Lopez Perez, 28, both of Honduras, fell about 100 feet to their deaths while working on the building's exterior. A fourth man on the scaffold received minor injuries.

The men's families have filed lawsuits against the builders that have been consolidated into one case, and a trial has been set for October 2010, said Steven Pastrana, attorney for Ramirez's family. The Austin Police Department is continuing a negligent homicide investigation into the incident, a police spokeswoman said Wednesday.

After the deaths, the Austin City Council directed staff to come up with new rules and programs, which could include better training, city inspections and more access to safety equipment, to make construction sites in the city safer.

Unsafe conditions weren't the only problem at the worksite, say a group of 18 workers who are seeking $55,000 in unpaid wages from contractors.

Emily Timm of the Workers Defense Project said that after the accident, Margate, Fla.-based Capoera Construction, the company that officials say employed the three men, disappeared without paying workers overtime or for their final weeks of work. The Workers Defense Project is trying to negotiate a settlement with contractors and owners of the building.

Timm said Capoera left town without paying workers about $65,000 in wages at another construction site near downtown.

Wednesday night, the Defense Project organized a candlelight vigil at the building, where family members, church leaders, co-workers and friends of the men who died gathered to remember them. Some of the men who were at the construction site that day addressed a crowd of about 30 people.

"We asked them to inspect the machines many times, but they never did," said Juanito Mirabal, 32. "I am here today to see that accidents like this don't happen again."

Filemón Salas, 37, said he did not go into work the day of the accident, and it felt like someone died in his place, because he usually worked on the scaffold. He said he also complained to the construction company about the scaffold, which he said was very shaky.

OSHA cited Capoera for three violations totaling $36,400 in proposed penalties for failing to develop and implement a safety and health program, failing to provide a competent person to inspect the scaffold and failing to provide adequate fall protection systems and to adequately train workers to recognize scaffolding hazards.

OSHA also cited the project's general contractor, Austin-based Andres Construction Services; Southlake-based Greater Metroplex Interiors Inc., the prime contractor for the building exterior; and Whitney-based Mast Climber Manufacturing, the owner and installer of the scaffolding system.

The investigation found that Mast Climber did not have the scaffold designed by a qualified person and failed to construct and load the scaffold in accordance with that design. OSHA also cited the company for eight other violations totaling $86,800 in proposed fines, including failing to have a competent person inspect the scaffold and its components and failing to remove damaged scaffold parts.

OSHA cited Andres Construction and Greater Metroplex Interiors with four violations each for failing to have the scaffold inspected by a competent person, failing to provide adequate fall protection systems and failing to train employees in the use of the scaffolding systems. Proposed penalties total $14,000 for Andres Construction Services and $22,400 for Greater Metroplex Interiors.

Officials with the companies either declined to comment or did not respond to interview requests. Capoera officials could not be located for comment. The firms have until Tuesday to pay the fines, request a meeting with OSHA officials or contest the citations.

Timm said that her group has found that unpaid wages at construction sites often accompany dangerous working conditions and applauded OSHA for citing not only Capoera but larger firms as well.

"We believe that safety at the workplace is the responsibility of every company in the contracting chain," Timm said. "Passing responsibility, passing the buck is not acceptable."

Construction worker abuse is theft and puts lives at stake

Austin says construction workers must get Rest Breaks and Water

Construction Jobs laced with injustice, hazards and death HOT applauds and endorses this study, although industry officials dispute its findings

New report shows Austin construction workers face dangers, low pay

Study details hazards faced by Austin construction workers

READER COMMENTS:

When a House Is Not a Home

Construction Jobs laced with injustice, hazards and death
HOT applauds and endorses this study, although industry officials dispute its findings