According the report nearly forty-one Bay State fishermen have lost their lives since 2000, making it the state’s most dangerous occupation this decade, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and MassCOSH, a workplace safety group, find in their annual report on death in the workplace. That includes seven fishermen alone in 2007.
Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, in a statement that overall, 80 workers in industries ranging from commercial fishing to construction lost their lives last year, the most since 2003. He added that it is an absolute outrage that, in this day and age, we have such a high number of lives lost on the job. It is said that fishing has lots of competition when it comes to dangerous jobs in Massachusetts.
The report indicated that nearly twenty Massachusetts workers who died last year worked in the construction trades, 13 worked in transportation, five worked for utilities and three worked for auto repair shops. Nine firefighters also died in the line of duty. Truck and auto crashes, on the job or heading to the job, were a top cause of death. But the overall number of on-job deaths came from the fishing industry, mostly fishermen.
