One Worker Dies Every 1 Hr 45 Min As Trump Cuts Labor-Law Enforcement
OSHA now has 20% fewer inspectors, and the number of willful violations issued has fallen by 42%. According to a report issued by Good Jobs First last December, wage and hour enforcement cases have declined by 97%, and workplace health and safety penalties have dropped 47%.
By Steve Wishnia
“I’ve witnessed many people having heatstroke, and many people having limbs and fingers amputated,” a worker at a Consolidated Catfish processing plant in Mississippi told reporters Apr. 22, speaking anonymously out of fear of retaliation. Despite the heat from the machines and the Deep South weather, she added, the plant has only one or two functioning water fountains, and they’re both “unsanitary.”
Consolidated Catfish was one of the 12 employers named in the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health’s annual “Dirty Dozen” list, released that day. They included D.R. Horton, the nation’s largest homebuilder; the Hyundai-Kia parts-supply chain; and two leading airport-support companies, Alliance Ground International and LSG Sky Chefs.
“More than 5,000 workers were killed on the job in 2024—an average of one every hour and 45 minutes. ”
More than 5,000 workers were killed on the job in 2024, COSH national director Jessica Martinez told an online press conference, an average of one every hour and 45 minutes. That figure is low, she said, because it doesn’t include unreported deaths and the much greater toll from occupational diseases. The 12 companies were selected for “patterns of neglect” that illustrate problems such as dangerous machinery, excessive heat, wage theft, and union-busting and retaliation against those who complain.
The Cambria Company, a Minnesota-based manufacturer of artificial-stone kitchen countertops, made the list because machining the quartz-epoxy mix it uses produces silica dust. Inhaling that dust often causes silicosis, a disease akin to the black lung that plagues coal miners. As of April 23, according to California Department of Public Health figures posted online, 30 artificial-stone workers in the state have died from silicosis since 2019, and there have been 547 cases diagnosed, most in the past 16 months and about three-fourths in the Los Angeles area. Almost all of the afflicted were Latino men.
Former Cambria worker Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez said he began having breathing problems in 2019 and was diagnosed with silicosis in 2021. In 2022, a doctor told him he had a year to live. A double lung transplant in early 2023 saved his life, he said—but it’s only good for a few more years.
“There is no reason to allow this carnage to continue,” David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety during the Obama administration, told a House subcommittee in January. Australia, he said, banned artificial stone after an epidemic of silicosis among workers, and countertop manufacturers there have found a safer substitute.
The subcommittee was holding hearings on a bill to prohibit lawsuits against manufacturers and sellers of artificial-stone-slab products for injuries caused by fabricators they hire who violate federal or state safety regulations.
“Supply chains are being used to dodge responsibility,” Martinez said.
In Hyundai and Kia’s supply chain, mostly located in Alabama and Georgia, the “Dirty Dozen” report said, “workers bear the burden of a model based on subcontracting and temporary labor agencies, allowing suppliers to cut labor costs while Hyundai-Kia denies workplace responsibility for legal violations.” Two workers were killed in accidents in the LG battery plant at Hyundai’s Metaplant America complex near Savannah in 2025, one crushed to death and one run over by a forklift. (That plant was the scene of a massive immigration raid that September.)
One Metaplant worker speaking anonymously in Spanish said he’d seen many injuries and that workers’ pay was sometimes late or short, but they wouldn’t complain because they feared being fired or deported. “We need real PPE, water, and breaks,” he added.
“If you speak out or report an injury, you’re more than likely to be retaliated against,” said Kissy Cox, a worker at the Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama. Wearing a black sling on her right arm, she listed her injuries: A ruptured right rotator cuff, rotator-cuff strains in both shoulders, arthritis, and carpal-tunnel syndrome.
“Heat is becoming an emergency,” Martinez said. In Phoenix in the summer of 2025, city inspectors responding to complaints by workers at LSG Sky Chefs, a major producer of airline meals, found that none of 12 trucks they checked had working air-conditioning.
At the airport, one worker told the City Council, the air temperature one June afternoon was 112°—and the tarmac’s surface temperature was 155°.
“The food manufacturer Maker’s Pride made the list for amputations, child-labor violations, and union-busting.”
Heat was also an issue at Jeny Sod and Nursery, a South Florida landscape supplier, along with wage-theft claims and pesticide exposure. The food manufacturer Maker’s Pride made the list for amputations, child-labor violations, and union-busting. The Subway sandwich chain was named for wage theft and retaliation. The owner of Wellmade Industries, a Georgia flooring manufacturer, was charged with human trafficking in March 2025, and its factory had been cited by both the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and local fire marshals for safety hazards.
Among the others, OSHA has cited airline baggage-handling contractor Alliance Ground International for “repeated and willful” safety violations, and workers have accused it of wage theft and union-busting. The CommonSpirit Health hospital chain made the list for attempted union-busting and failing to protect employees from workplace violence. At Revoli Construction in Massachusetts, a 63-year-old worker was killed in November 2025 when a trench caved in—more than 25 years after OSHA first cited the company for excavation-safety violations.
COSH selected D.R. Horton for letting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raid jobsites in Minnesota without a judicial warrant. During one raid last winter, said Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha organizer Patricio Cambrias, workers were trapped on the roof of a house in below-zero weather long enough for one to suffer frostbite.
“Workplace-safety advocates have long complained that OSHA had far too few inspectors to enforce safety regulations—less than one inspector for every 6,000 workplaces, the AFL-CIO’s 2025 “Death on the Job” report noted—but the Trump regime has been moving backwards.”
Workplace-safety advocates have long complained that OSHA had far too few inspectors to enforce safety regulations—less than one inspector for every 6,000 workplaces, the AFL-CIO's 2025 "Death on the Job" report noted—but the Trump regime has been moving backwards. According to Martinez, the agency now has 20% fewer inspectors, and the number of willful violations issued has fallen by 42%. According to a report issued by Good Jobs First last December, wage and hour enforcement cases have declined by 97%, and workplace health and safety penalties have dropped 47%.
The agency, Martinez added, also has rolled back standards, “including the general-duty clause,” which requires employers to keep the job “free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.”
While the Biden administration began the process of setting national heat-safety standards, “we don’t see any movement,” Martinez told Work-Bites. COSH, she continued, wants to see funds channeled towards enforcement, not voluntary-compliance programs, and specific heat standards that go beyond the general-duty clause for “water, shade, and rest, both indoors and outdoors.”
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the Trump regime’s demolition of much of the federal government, mentioned OSHA only peripherally. However, it did argue that the Department of Labor should prioritize “compliance assistance” over “regulation by enforcement.”