Wyoming isn't nicknamed the “Equality State” for nothing. It’s the first state to grant women the right to vote (1869). The first woman was elected to statewide office there in 1894! Compare that to the sorry record of a big state like New York. But I wish I could say the same about the rights of workers in the great state of Equality.
Today, the New York Times is reporting on a pretty shocking report identifying “Wyoming, with its growing oil, gas and mining industries, [a]s one of the most dangerous places in the United States to work.”
Dr. Timothy Ryan, an epidemiologist, was hired by the state to study this problem and has since quit because of inaction by the state. His report, issued January 3, says, among other things:
Over the last year I have analyzed 17 years of occupational fatality data (1992-2008), read through fatality case reports, and have spoken with hundreds of employees working for various sized companies in the major industries in Wyoming. The common theme throughout is the lack of a “culture of safety” in Wyoming. Safety occurs as an afterthought. Greater than 85% of the fatality reports indicate that safety procedures were not followed. …
Wyoming averaged a fatality every ten days over the last ten years.
What's more, he notes, “Currently, OSHA inspections occur annually in less than 2% of Wyoming establishments. The inspections that do occur are primarily based on known incidents, employee complaints and those companies with a high level of workmen’s compensation claims.”
Writes the Times,
The report also noted that Wyoming had the highest workplace fatality rate in the country for all but one year from 2003 through 2008. In 2010, the last year that data was provided, Wyoming’s estimated occupational death rate was three and a half times the national average, the report said. …
To be sure, Wyoming’s oil and gas boom, which began in the 1990s, has drawn thousands of people with high-paying but dangerous jobs. In August, three workers were killed in Converse County after an explosion at an oil storage site. …
Oil and gas rig workers and their families are often itinerant, hold little political clout and fear that reporting safety problems could get them fired, said Laurie Goodman, a Wyoming lobbyist who has worked on occupational safety issues.
As we’ve noted before and is addressed at length in this Center for Justice & Democracy report, because the workers comp system fails to keep employers on any kind of legal "hook" for these conditions, the system itself perpetuates a culture of non-safety. The paper reports,
In 2009, Ms. Goodman and worker advocates tried unsuccessfully to get state lawmakers to pass a bill that would have made it easier for workers to file lawsuits after an accident.
“We have a system where there’s no accountability, where the employer has no incentive to be responsive,” said John Vincent, a former mayor of Riverton, who has represented the families of dead and injured oil and gas workers in his law practice and has worked on the legislative effort. “People are afraid to sue. They won’t report injuries. They’ll just stay at home until they get better.” …
“It seems like people die out there all the time. They’re leaving wives and children,” Ms. [Natlie] Moss, [whose young husband was killed] said. “What 26-year-old should have to plan a funeral?”
Indeed.



