Worker safety: A cloud over the construction boom

Nashville’s fast-paced growth has changed our city’s skyline and caught national headlines.

We’re seemingly full of towering yellow cranes and active construction sites busy with workers using hefty machinery and hoisting heavy materials – often several hundred feet in the air. Tragically, Tennessee is one of the most dangerous states when it comes to construction worker on-the-job injury and deaths. In recent years, the city of Nashville and the State of Tennessee have not seen eye-to-eye on how to improve safety for workers. Today, we’re speaking with reporters, local advocates and the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development about the sometimes deadly problems workers face, how they’re working to make construction sites safer, and what to do if you get injured on the job.

This episode was produced by Katherine Ceicys and Mary Mancini. 

Guests:

• Molly Davis | Growth and Development Reporter, The Tennessean 
• Cynthia Abrams | Metro Reporter, WPLN
• Sandra Sepulveda | Metro Councilwoman, District 30
• Charlie Rodriguez | Organizer, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades
• Troy Haley | Administrator, Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, Tennessee Department of Labor & Workforce Development

Further Reading and Listening:

• Tennessean: Tennessee ranks among most dangerous states for construction work: ‘Carrying caskets,’ by Molly Davis
• WPLN, Workplace safety might get a boost in Nashville, pending negotiations on Metro’s budget, by Cynthia Abrams