Cell tower-related fatalities investigated tonight on PBS

[Steveanderson13]

Give me your ****in receipt dammit!

Or I'll whack you with my cane!

[Steveanderson13]

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.

Absurdity and ridicule do not help your case. Because of the low incidence and lack of public risk, change is unlikely in spite of Pro Publica efforts. But then again, lack of public knowledge of the actions of national companies helps the status quo. The trend elsewhere is different. In areas of public risk, changes have been made where companies are accountable for their contractors. Sloppy contractors leading to accidents increases a company's public risk rating. Too high a rating can cause revocation of license, out of business, etc. I'm sure similar measures must be in place in public construction, if not towers. If similar constraints applied to towers, you can bet at&t would be oversighting it, envelope stuffer or no.

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.

Armchair to construction, yes. Otherwise, not a good warning.

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.

My point earlier, they seemed extremely low, part of the reason for inaction.

So, Mr. Armchair Mathematician, add it up. The article said AT$T had 16 deaths in so many years. Total cell tower deaths were apx 43. Total tower deaths were apx 100. But tower rates are ten times the construction rates. And you say 300 falling deaths per year which are a third of all construction, or 900. So how does figure? That was my beef with the article in the first place.

[GSMinCT]

This is disgusting how they hire contractors to do their work. These guys should be union-protected AT&T employees who have an apprenticeship program to do the job right, not a bunch of underpaid contractors.

[GSMinCT]

I am just quoting Gizmodo....

...although, if you want to get down to it, Verizon has been working on towers across the nation to prep and launch LTE since 2009 and they still sit at only 2 deaths. Sprint has more sites than AT&T and even when they rolled out EVDO to their network in 05/06, they manged to keep their death toll at 1.

Gizmodo only singles out AT&T for ignoring safety protocols, and while I am sure it is not just them, we will have to watch and see to find out more.

No matter what way you look at it, AT&T is doing a bad job ensuring workers' safety... however, just because Sprint has more towers means nothing. I'd be surprised if more than a small percentage of Nextel towers have ever been climbed under Sprint ownership. They are just sitting there running. Also, other than new sites and LTE what were they climbing for? HSPA+ runs on 850/1900 just like GSM/EDGE and TDMA, so why touch the antennas up top?

[mick662]

Absurdity and ridicule do not help your case. Because of the low incidence and lack of public risk, change is unlikely in spite of Pro Publica efforts. But then again, lack of public knowledge of the actions of national companies helps the status quo. The trend elsewhere is different. In areas of public risk, changes have been made where companies are accountable for their contractors. Sloppy contractors leading to accidents increases a company's public risk rating. Too high a rating can cause revocation of license, out of business, etc. I'm sure similar measures must be in place in public construction, if not towers. If similar constraints applied to towers, you can bet at&t would be oversighting it, envelope stuffer or no.

You can call it absurdity and ridicule if you like. I call it fact. I live it every day of my life. The only rating construction companies are worried about is the insurance company's EMR rating. Construction companies don't want accidents to happen. Even if they don't care about their employees, they sure as hell care about how much their insurance premiums are. And a high EMR rating will disqualify them from certain bids such as state and federally funded jobs as well as some companies like 3M. Also try to remember that not all of these deaths were with one company, as you make it sound.

Armchair to construction, yes. Otherwise, not a good warning.

Well, that's kinda what we're talking about here, no?

My point earlier, they seemed extremely low, part of the reason for inaction.

So, Mr. Armchair Mathematician, add it up. The article said AT$T had 16 deaths in so many years. Total cell tower deaths were apx 43. Total tower deaths were apx 100. But tower rates are ten times the construction rates. And you say 300 falling deaths per year which are a third of all construction, or 900. So how does figure? That was my beef with the article in the first place.

I don't need to be a mathemetician, nor do I need to add it up. I just need to be able to read, and I can. According to the OSHA Construction eTool:

Falls from elevation account for one third of all deaths in construction

http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/cons.../mainpage.html

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

A preliminary total of 4,547 fatal work injuries were reported in the United States in 2010.....Fatal falls declined 2% in 2010 (from 645 in 2009 to 635 in 2010)......751 fatal injuries in the construction industry in 2010

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf

This is disgusting how they hire contractors to do their work. These guys should be union-protected AT&T employees who have an apprenticeship program to do the job right, not a bunch of underpaid contractors.

No, the disgusting thing is what unions do to industries.

[Sam73065]

This is disgusting how they hire contractors to do their work. These guys should be union-protected AT&T employees who have an apprenticeship program to do the job right, not a bunch of underpaid contractors.

Agreed, a union can offer some protection in the area of safety and training, not to mention how the contractors often suffer with no job security nor have any health benefits.

No, the disgusting thing is what unions do to industries.

No, what is disgusting is that unions are a necessity due to the propensity of corporations to abuse their employees. If only corporations were to treat their employees with dignity and respect, then unions would fade away quickly. But since corporations prefer to run roughshod over their employees, unions became a necessity. Currently we're seeing the downward cycle of unions and watching corporations destroy the middle class in an effort to maximize profits, and will probably in the next 20 years see unions start to cycle up again in reaction to a middle class which will be nearly extinct by that time.

This is precisely why we see so many deaths in many industries, corporation only care about insurance rates and govt regulations, they don't care one bit if a man or woman dies or is injured or even if they can feed their family. That's the funny part about people claiming the tower deaths are the fault of the workers, they just should have said "NO" if they felt unsafe..... The result would have been their termination as soon as the contractor could get away with it. I see the exact same attitude in my work environment, a constant pressure to ignore safety until somebody is hurt, then they attempt to terminate the worker.

[GSMinCT]

No, the disgusting thing is what unions do to industries.

Not all unions are UAW.

[Steveanderson13]

Also try to remember that not all of these deaths were with one company, as you make it sound.

Review the posts. I never said or implied "one company".

I don't need to be a mathemetician, nor do I need to add it up. I just need to be able to read, and I can. According to the OSHA Construction eTool:

http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/cons.../mainpage.html

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf

The subject of the thread was a show and an article which included stats such as "ten times higher than construction" which made no sense to me. Based on the stats you gave which did seem reasonable to me, it would take "adding it up" to know if the show had any merit.