Cell tower-related fatalities investigated tonight on PBS

[zephxiii]

Good one, but far from reality, corporations often try to hide from the long arm of the law, but the law wins. The words plausible deniability should ring true. Even the almighty Apple did a just in time intervention in regards to Foxconn.

Down and dirty, done cheaply, or we'll walk down the street!

Far from reality? The reality is that the workers are the ones in control of the situation when they are going to work on whatever cell site. THAT IS REALITY, not some stupid company conspiracy theory/passing the buck of responsibility. Safety starts at the job site and with the people actually doing the work and the company that was hired to do the work for AT&T are the ones who are responsible for their employee's safety. It is up to them to make sure they take the appropriate steps to be safe.

You are basically saying if you were the supervisor in a separate contracted company and you had a loss of life on the job, you would just blame AT&T for not stepping in and doin YOUR job to ensure the safety of YOUR workers. This is especially important when you are hiring younger inexperienced workers...Good one there buddy just pass the buck instead of taking control and responsibility.

As far as Foxconn, you are talking about a whole different country and culture with different laws etc. Even still it shouldn't be Apple's responsibility for the safety and operations of Foxconn's facilities.

[Steveanderson13]

Down and dirty, done cheaply, or we'll walk down the street!

With emphasis on "cheap". Fraid thats the American way, for now at least.

[zephxiii]

With emphasis on "cheap". Fraid thats the American way, for now at least.

Welcome to the free market...there isn't really anything abnormal about doing it the most cost savings way possible...it's just the way things go.

Maybe apple with all their money and profits should build their own manufacturing facilities here and hire Americans....but we all damn know that won't ever happen because it's cheaper to hire Chinese people to do it!

[Steveanderson13]

Far from reality? The reality is that the workers are the ones in control of the situation when they are going to work on whatever cell site. THAT IS REALITY, not some stupid company conspiracy theory/passing the buck of responsibility. Safety starts at the job site and with the people actually doing the work and the company that was hired to do the work for AT&T are the ones who are responsible for their employee's safety. It is up to them to make sure they take the appropriate steps to be safe.

Cop-out. Whoever has the money is in control. I contract out; my contractee sets the terms due to public regulation. So be safe or be gone. But I know its not altruism or my life that matters. Its the public's. Unfortunately, there's no corollary here.

[Steveanderson13]

Welcome to the free market...there isn't really anything abnormal about doing it the most cost savings way possible...it's just the way things go.

As wonderful and productive as it is, the free market has not been a universal panacea. See the accumulation of laws enacted since the Industrial Revolution began.

[johnhere]

Cutting corners when lives are at stake is never a good thing. I would rather get lte two years from now with no fatalities instead of next month with even one. One fatality is one too many. I'm not trying to put all the blame on the carriers but corners being cut in this situation rarely have good outcomes.

[DRC72]

http://www.propublica.org/article/cell-tower-fatalities

Attachment 81477
Tower climber Jay Guilford poses atop a cell tower. He was one of 11 climbers to die while working on AT&T jobs during a wave of cell service expansion from 2006 to 2008. Photo courtesy of Bridget Pierce. (his fiancee')

The picture kinda undermines the story. His was the main one given in the article.

I'm sure they must be getting a nice dose of radiation....

[johnhere]

I might be able to climb a 200ft tower but no chance I could ever climb one that's 1900.

http://www.wirelessestimator.com/generaldoc.cfm?ContentID=9

[Wireless Junkie]

For the most part, they locate on sites that are owned by tower management companies. AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile all have tower management businesses of their own and own large numbers of towers, Verizon does not. So of course I'd expect Verizon to have a much lower number of deaths on towers they owned. What shocks me is how much lower than average Sprint has stayed. I wonder if one thing that helps is Sprint and T-Mobile owned sites tend to be smaller and in urban areas, where as AT&T owns many extremely tall and remote sites...

The deaths they are referring to are the people working or contracting for specific companies, Sprint owns almost no sites anymore as they have sold them off and contracted Ericsson for their network operations now so that wouldn't be it...

Again finding excuses doesn't do anything, Verizon own's a lot of sites but this is the people working on the sites. AT&T doesn't own all their tower's, probably the majority of their sites are co-location anyways. Verizon has just as many or more extremely tall and remote sites and the death toll is lower, so hmm.

[Wireless Junkie]

Exactly, I'm not saying it's not sad. Just that we don't always need to be looking someone to blame. I hope that if I die on the job in a crazy accident I could have prevented, that my family doesn't sue whoever I'm working for.

Why would you not want a lawsuit? Geesh, this is America get with the program. You have to have at least 5+ lawsuits in your life to be a legal American. Slip and fall in your local Wally-World? Lawsuit!, Fried chicken not fried enough? Lawsuit!, Accelerator gets stuck because of aftermarket floor mats? DUH Sue!

[zentec]

Far from reality? The reality is that the workers are the ones in control of the situation when they are going to work on whatever cell site. THAT IS REALITY, not some stupid company conspiracy theory/passing the buck of responsibility. Safety starts at the job site and with the people actually doing the work and the company that was hired to do the work for AT&T are the ones who are responsible for their employee's safety. It is up to them to make sure they take the appropriate steps to be safe.

You are basically saying if you were the supervisor in a separate contracted company and you had a loss of life on the job, you would just blame AT&T for not stepping in and doin YOUR job to ensure the safety of YOUR workers. This is especially important when you are hiring younger inexperienced workers...Good one there buddy just pass the buck instead of taking control and responsibility.

The cell carriers have a moral obligation to put a stop to sub-contractors using untrained and inexperienced climbers. Regardless of the arrangement of contracts and the relationship of the carrier to the climber, ultimately the carriers are a party to the situation where the contractor can only afford to hire people who have the greatest probability of getting hurt.

These cell companies book billions of dollars per year in profits. There is no excuse paying someone slightly above minimum wage for jobs that require years of experience.

[johnhere]

With the profits the carriers get they could pay at least 20 an hour. 10 is an insult in my opinion.

[CA]

With the profits the carriers get they could pay at least 20 an hour. 10 is an insult in my opinion.

Not a chance I would go up that far for less than 150, but maybe when I was younger I would of done it for 25. Walmart pays more than 10 bucks!

Give me your ****in receipt dammit!

[johnhere]

I would also have them pay for a good life insurance policy in case I died that way my family could pay off everything.

[mick662]

Far from reality? The reality is that the workers are the ones in control of the situation when they are going to work on whatever cell site. THAT IS REALITY, not some stupid company conspiracy theory/passing the buck of responsibility. Safety starts at the job site and with the people actually doing the work and the company that was hired to do the work for AT&T are the ones who are responsible for their employee's safety. It is up to them to make sure they take the appropriate steps to be safe.

You are basically saying if you were the supervisor in a separate contracted company and you had a loss of life on the job, you would just blame AT&T for not stepping in and doin YOUR job to ensure the safety of YOUR workers. This is especially important when you are hiring younger inexperienced workers...Good one there buddy just pass the buck instead of taking control and responsibility.

The cell carriers have a moral obligation to put a stop to sub-contractors using untrained and inexperienced climbers. Regardless of the arrangement of contracts and the relationship of the carrier to the climber, ultimately the carriers are a party to the situation where the contractor can only afford to hire people who have the greatest probability of getting hurt.

These cell companies book billions of dollars per year in profits. There is no excuse paying someone slightly above minimum wage for jobs that require years of experience.

zephxiii's post is right on the money. zentec, you are clearly an armchair quarterback with little to no knowledge of the construction industry. That's just not how it works. Who do you expect from AT&T to go check up on sites? Someone from the CEO's office? An envelope stuffer? This is why these things are contracted out. Companies are hired that know what they are doing, and it is their responsibility to work safe. Oversight is OSHA's job, not AT&T, VZW, Sprint, etc.

Cop-out. Whoever has the money is in control. I contract out; my contractee sets the terms due to public regulation. So be safe or be gone. But I know its not altruism or my life that matters. Its the public's. Unfortunately, there's no corollary here.

Another armchair quarterback. I understand your intentions are good, but you have to know what you are even looking for. I could do thousands of unsafe, OSHA finable offenses on a job site and you wouldn't even recognize them.

Tower climbing, an obscure field with no more than 10,000 workers, has a death rate roughly 10 times that of construction.

Does a death rate of 10 times mean anything here? No. Why didn't they compare climbing with climbing?

This would probably be because OSHA classifies them as "falling deaths", regardless of how you got up there or how high you are. It may sound bad, but in relation to the rest of the construction industry, the numbers aren't exactly high. Falls from elevation account for one-third of all deaths in constuction, with more than 300 falling deaths per year.

I might be able to climb a 200ft tower but no chance I could ever climb one that's 1900.

I bet you wouldn't make it 100 feet up. This is 120 feet in a 3 foot by 3 foot basket hanging on a lattice-boom crane.