The Cell Phone in Your Pocket Shouldn’t Cost a Worker’s Life

Wireless services have opened up avenues of communication and resources unlike any in history. We rely on these connections to stay in touch with friends and family members, operate businesses and communicate on a global scale. But providing these innovative services through networks of communication towers should not come at the cost of any worker’s life.

The tower industry is small, with roughly 10,000 to 20,000 workers, but can be incredibly dangerous: in 2014 alone, 12 tower workers were killed on the job and dozens were significantly injured. To reverse the alarming trends in tower climber deaths, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Federal Communications Commission established a partnership in October 2014 with a focus on improving safety in this industry. Today we hosted our second workshop with telecommunications and tower industry leaders and worker advocates to discuss our shared commitment to keeping workers safe. Through this collaboration, we work to honor the legacy of climbers who were killed on the job by improving our efforts to make sure that no family has to experience the anguish of losing a loved one in a workplace fatality.

[Dr. David Michaels is the assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health at the US Department of Labor. Roger Sherman is the chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission.]