BTEA PRESIDENT CROWLEY OP-ED: SILENT HAZARD - (8/29/2024)

Op-ed: A silent hazard in the construction industry needs our attention (crainsnewyork.com)

Op-ed: A silent hazard in the construction industry needs our attention

Elizabeth Crowley August 22, 2024 12:03 PM updated 18 hours ago

Mental wellness and suicide prevention are not easy topics for anyone to discuss. Suicide is a quiet killer, and in a gritty industry like construction, mental wellness too often connotes weakness for hard-driving workers relying on toughness to earn their paychecks.

Yet data from the Centers for Disease Control shows the construction industry at or near the top of professions where suicide is the leading cause of death. In 2022 alone, 6,428 construction workers died from suicide.

These workers are nearly six times more likely to die from suicide than from job site-related injuries and four times more likely than the average American.

Yes, construction workers are more likely to die from suicide than from all job-site accidents, including falls, struck-by, caught in-between and electrocutions.

Substance abuse plays a significant role, often arising from a variety of job pressures, the inherently dangerous nature of the work, chronic pain, fluctuations in the economy and not knowing where the next paycheck is coming from. Nearly 15% of all construction workers in the U.S. have a substance abuse disorder compared to 8.6% of the general population of adults, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The Building Trades Employers’ Association (BTEA), representing 1,200 union contractors in New York, is recommending a package of policy proposals calling on the city to track suicides more closely in the construction industry and to include mental wellness education in all required site safety trainings and worker safety orientations.

This package is the first of its kind in New York City as no local legislation has ever been considered or passed previously, speaking to the lack of awareness of this crisis.

Among the BTEA’s most critical proposals is its mandate for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to report annually on suicides categorized by industry. We cannot tackle the construction industry’s suicide problem unless stakeholders have a firm grasp on the scope of the crisis.

Our industry is proposing that the New York City Department of Buildings incorporate mental wellness into its Site Safety Training Program. There are currently 390,000 construction workers in New York City who have received site safety training with no mental wellness component. This amounts to a woefully antiquated approach that fails to account for everything we have learned about construction industry suicides in recent years.

Going further, the BTEA proposes that mental wellness be part of on-site safety orientations across the board, and that the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) incorporate mental wellness into its OSHA-10 and OSHA-30 training regimens.

Finally, Naloxone (Narcan) should be available on larger construction sites to treat drug overdoses. Naloxone can help restore breathing and reverse the sedation and unconsciousness that are common during an opioid overdose.

Ignoring the reality of opioid overdose in New York construction will not solve the problem. In those rare instances on the job site, being flat-footed can mean losing a life.

BTEA contractors are at the forefront in recognizing that more needs to be done to care for the total wellness of our workforce. There is more focus in training workers to understand when a colleague is in distress and buy the time necessary to connect them with the appropriate professional care. These interventions have prevented tragedies on a number of occasions.

The construction industry is calling on government leaders to enact the changes to improve mental wellness outcomes and save lives.

More contractors, labor leaders, real estate owners, and developers are recognizing the scale of this crisis and are acknowledging the need to address total wellness in the construction industry. Let’s raise awareness, reduce the stigma around mental wellness and save lives – keeping workers and their families together for the long run.

It’s time for our government leaders to step up and provide better protections for our vulnerable construction workers, who serve as the bedrock of our country’s economy, with the support that they need and deserve.

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