Mississippi worker injury rate, compensation among worst in nation: Report

After 20 years hand-filleting and operating a scale for the Consolidated Catfish Co., Catherine Bacon started experiencing severe pain in her left hand. Nerve damage. 

Bacon, who lives in Durant, underwent surgery in 2012. During the two months she took off work to recover, Bacon said she had to make do with a weekly income of about $130 in workers' compensation. 

Bacon, 50, was already making an hourly wage of just $10.05, her weekly check about $250 after two decades with the Mississippi Delta-based catfish processing plant.

Once she returned to work under doctor's orders of light duty, she said, the plant fired her.

"It kind of hurt. I put in so many years on the job faithfully and once I got injured, they didn't have anything for me. To me, they didn't show any sympathy. They just said, 'We don't have any use for you,'" Bacon said. 

She spent the next year on unemployment, receiving just $100 a week, she said, until her local union helped get her job back. Bacon, who has four children, two still in her household, doesn't receive any other public assistance. In the aftermath of her injury, she relied heavily on her nearby family members and church food pantry to survive. 

"I managed to make it through, even though I'm still struggling," Bacon said, citing her still-meager wage. "In the industry I work, it's always a struggle. You're always going to struggle paying your bills. It's always a low wage job."

Related:Surviving 'food apartheid' in Mississippi's capital

Billy Boswell, director of human resources for Consolidated Catfish Co., said the company is following state workers' compensation guidelines and that Bacon was terminated not because of her injury, but because of limitations placed on her by her doctor, preventing her from completing the job's tasks.

Boswell also said the company paid Bacon a $55,000 settlement related to her injury, based on what damage to her hand is considered permanent, in addition to payment of her medical bills. Bacon said she received the settlement between her firing and rehiring.

Now, Bacon helps the Delta-based Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights team advocate for better working conditions and educate employees about their rights to a safe environment.

It's a relevant objective.

Mississippi has the fourth highest rate of fatal work injuries behind Montana, Wyoming
and North Dakota. Workers in Mississippi are killed on the job twice as often as the national average, more than six per 100,000 people in 2015.

This statistic is the focus of a report "Dying On the Job in Mississippi" released Thursday from the National Employment Law Project, which partnered with the local workers' center. The 2017 America's Health Rankings report released this week also includes Mississippi's high worker injury rate, just another reason Mississippi's health ranks worst in the nation.

Several calls to the Mississippi Workers' Compensation Commission were not returned by Thursday afternoon.

Fatal injuries are one piece of the picture, and because Mississippi does not report all serious injuries, identifying the extent of the worker safety issue, and where it may be occurring, is difficult.

"Mississippi is one of only nine states that chose not to participate in this data collection," the National Employment Law Project's report states. "Without this injury-related monitoring, it is difficult to develop effective solutions to truly protect workers from workplace injuries in Mississippi."

While not a complete list, Mississippi employers do have to report all severe injuries resulting in an amputation, loss of an eye or overnight hospitalization. 

According to the report, based on 413 reports from employers, more than 200 Mississippi workers suffered these types of injuries between 2015 and 2016.

The "Dying On the Job" report also raised concerns over the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's involvement in Mississippi. OSHA is the federal agency tasked with setting and enforcing workplace safety standards.

In 2016, there were 11 OSHA inspectors in Mississippi. It would take 130 years for those 11 inspectors to examine every workplace in Mississippi just once.

Across the border in Alabama, there are 24 OSHA inspectors, according to a report by union AFL-CIO, which would still have to work for 114 years to examine every job site in Alabama once.

By this measure, how long it would take the number of inspectors to examine every workplace, Mississippi ranks near the middle.

Even more concerning to advocates, the law project found that OSHA operations have decreased significantly since the Trump administration took office. From Jan. 25 to Oct. 1 this year, OSHA has conducted 100 fewer inspections, a decrease of about one-third, compared to the same time period last year.

OSHA representatives did not return calls to Clarion Ledger Thursday afternoon.

Not only is oversight lacking, suggests the report, but when workers in Mississippi do get injured, they are met with the least support of any state.

Mississippi provides both the lowest maximum weekly worker compensation for temporary disability — $478 — and the least amount of time to receive permanent disability — 450 weeks (8½ years) — of any state in the country.

Mississippi is the only state that caps disability at 450 weeks. Five states offer 500 or more and 43 states provide support for a lifetime or until retirement.

"If you're hurt on the job, if you go over eight and a half years, you're just left out," Bacon said. "If (the state) could raise that up, it would be helpful."

Regarding the report, Gov. Phil Bryant's spokesman Clay Chandler said in a statement: "Workers compensation benefits are commensurate with wages. Although every case is different, calculating benefits based on wages earned is fairest to the employee, employer and follows the laws governing workers compensation in Mississippi."

Mississippi is "completely at the bottom and out of step with every other state in the nation," said Debbie Berkowitz, the law project's worker safety expert, formerly with OSHA, and the lead author of the report.

"They have a very high rate of on-the-job deaths, which are tragic and can destroy families and can even destroy communities. They also provide the least cushion for workers who suffer an on-the-job injury to make sure they can survive and not fall into poverty," Berkowitz said. "And at the same time you have the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal office in Jackson, their staff is way down and they essentially cut inspections by a third in Mississippi over the last year. So it's a confluence of three alarming trends. I think the state officials really need to take a hard look and figure out, 'Can we do better and can we protect Mississippi workers and their families?'"

Mississippi has the highest rate of poverty and childhood poverty — nearly a third of Mississippi kids live in poverty — which contributes greatly to its poor health ranking.

Because the amount of salary replaced through workers' compensation is based on a worker's previous salary, Mississippians who get injured on the job rarely receive $478 a week.

Even $400 a week amounts to roughly $20,800 a year, an unlivable wage for a single person with children in Mississippi, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology's 2016 wage calculator.

Berkowitz also noted Mississippi doesn't guarantee workers won't be fired for filing workers' compensation. "They say, 'You violated a rule.' And the rule is you can't get injured," Berkowitz said.

"It's so many people I work with, they're working injured. They don't report it. They don't file workers' compensation or go to the doctor," Bacon said. "They're afraid they're going to be fired, there will be retaliation against them. They're afraid if they report it, they won't get 40 hours and their check is already low."

Workers' compensation benefits doled out to workers in Mississippi has been on the decline for years, the report states, in part because of the difficulty workers face in trying to access them.

To ensure workers are protected, Berkowitz recommends Mississippi do four things:

• Increase the maximum amount of time to receive permanent disability from 450 to 520 weeks
• Add to the Mississippi Workers’ Compensation law language to prohibit retaliation against workers for seeking benefits
• Participate in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses by collecting nonfatal injury and illness data
• Fully staff the Jackson OSHA office with at least 11 inspectors