Travis Parsons, the Director of Occupational Safety and Health for the Laborers' Health and Safety Fund of North America (LHSFNA), joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast as part of the Labor 132 series presented by the National Labor Office of Blue Cross Blue Shield, to discuss the history of worker safety in America, the preventable deaths that continue to happen on job sites every week and what the current anti-regulatory environment means for laborers across the country.
Parsons traced the evolution of worker safety from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911 through the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 1970. He also described the LHSFNA's founding in 1988 as a labor-management fund to protect members, and addressed two of the most persistent yet preventable killers in construction: trench collapses, which claim approximately one worker per week, and work zone incidents involving run-over and back-over injuries.
Parsons also shared his thoughts on the current administration's rollback of OSHA resources, the inadequacy of current penalties for safety violators and why voluntary safety compliance without enforcement is, in his words, a non-starter.
- Approximately one construction worker dies in a trench collapse each week in the United States, and every one is preventable, Parsons said. OSHA's trenching and excavation standard requires employers to either slope, shore or shield any excavation deep enough to pose a collapse risk and requires every construction trench to have a designated competent person responsible for safety. Parsons said the costs of following those requirements are always lower than the direct and indirect costs of a collapse, which include job shutdown, worker replacement, retraining and legal liability in addition to the incalculable human cost.
- The current administration has cut OSHA staffing and resources. Parsons described OSHA as already underfunded and understaffed before the cuts. The result is a rollback of worker safety and health regulations across multiple areas. Parsons said enforcement is the critical variable in whether any safety standard actually protects workers. He compared it to speed limits on highways. Most drivers exceed the posted limit, and without enforcement, the situation would be far worse. Voluntary compliance without enforcement has consistently failed throughout the history of worker safety.
- The Laborers' Health and Safety Fund of North America was created in 1988 as a labor-management fund with a board of trustees split equally between labor and management representatives. It operates alongside two other LIUNA funds — the LIUNA Training and Education Fund and the Laborers and Employers Cooperatives Education Trust. The LHSFNA conducts worker advocacy, occupational safety and health research, industrial hygiene work and worker training across the United States and Canada. Parsons said the fund represents what engaged signatory contractors and labor leadership can accomplish together when safety is treated as a shared priority.
From Physical Therapy to Prevention
Travis Parsons did not come to worker safety through the labor movement. He came through physical therapy. His undergraduate work was in physiology and healthcare, and he spent years working in physical rehabilitation — treating traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, orthopedic patients and pediatric cases in aquatic therapy settings. He was helping people recover from injuries one patient at a time. Then he learned about occupational safety and health. Instead of treating injuries after they occurred, Parsons could, in this new area, prevent them before they happened. He went back to school for a master's degree in industrial hygiene and safety and has been working in occupational safety and health for more than 25 years, the last 24 with LIUNA's Laborers’ Health and Safety Fund of North America.
The Origin of OSHA and Why It Took So Long
Parsons traced the history of worker safety in the United States to the country's early industrial era, when worker fatalities and injuries were considered an unavoidable cost of doing business. Some major construction bids included projected fatality numbers. Disasters like the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, where 146 garment workers were killed when locked exits and inward-swinging doors trapped them inside, and the Hawk's Nest Tunnel Disaster in West Virginia, where workers developed silicosis, started to change things. But changed public opinion was not enough on its own. Parsons said credit belongs largely to the labor movement, which reframed worker safety as a basic human and civil right rather than an acceptable business cost.
That led to the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, signed by Richard Nixon. It created OSHA as it exists today. The agency is small relative to the work it does. It was underfunded and understaffed even before the current administration began cutting its resources. Parsons said the cuts make an already difficult situation worse.
Trench Collapses: One a Week, Every One Preventable
Parsons began the next segment by emphasizing a figure he hopes listeners will remember: approximately one construction worker dies in a trench collapse each week in the United States. That is roughly 52 deaths per year. Every single one is preventable, he added.
OSHA's trenching and excavation standard provides three methods for protecting workers. The first is sloping, in which the walls are angled to prevent collapse. The second option is shoring, where timber or other structural supports are installed along the trench walls. The third choice is shielding, which involves inserting a protective steel structure, called a trench box, within which workers operate. When applied correctly, any one of the three prevents collapse deaths. The standard also requires that every construction trench have a designated competent person responsible for ensuring trench safety. That requirement exists only in construction, making it a specific protection for the laborers who dig most of the country's trenches.
The cost objection comes up consistently. Parsons said it fails every time it is examined. The costs avoided by skipping a trench box are always smaller than the direct and indirect costs of a collapse, which include job shutdown, investigation, regulatory penalties, worker replacement, retraining, legal liability and the human cost that cannot be quantified. Companies cutting corners on trench safety are not saving money. They are gambling, and the workers are the ones paying when that gamble fails.
Work Zone Safety: The Same Preventable Problem
The other major preventable hazard Parsons addressed is work zone safety — run-over and back-over injuries on road construction jobs involving both workers on the job site and members of the traveling public. Similar to the trenching, a playbook exists, the solutions are known but implementation is sometimes missing.
On the worker side, internal traffic control plans — structured protocols for how vehicles and workers move within an active work zone — need to be a mandatory requirement rather than a suggestion. On the barrier side, the standard practice of relying on cones and barrels in high-speed traffic zones falls short of what the situation demands. Positive protection, meaning physical barriers rather than visual warnings, needs to be more widely required. Parsons made an observation that boggles his mind: personal vehicles sold in the United States today are required to have cameras, collision warnings and automatic braking systems, but the heavy equipment operating in construction work zones is not held to the same standard. The technology exists. The will and funding to require it do not.
He also said the most effective way to improve work zone safety across the industry is the bid process. When safety protections are written into the bid specifications for road construction projects, they become a standard competitive condition rather than a cost that responsible contractors absorb, while underbidding competitors cut out. Leveling that playing field through bid specifications protects workers and rewards contractors who do it right.
The Anti-Regulatory Environment and Why Enforcement Is Not Optional
Parsons was direct about the current federal landscape. The administration views regulations as obstacles rather than protections. OSHA, already underfunded and understaffed, has been cut further. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) also faced cuts. Worker safety and health are not a priority for the current administration.
Parsons also pushed back against the argument that voluntary compliance can substitute for enforcement. He compared the concept to driving on a highway. The posted speed limit might be 55 mph, but most drivers are doing 65 or more. Remove the speed limit and the possibility of enforcement, and most people know what would happen. The same principle applies to every safety standard. There needs to be consequences for non-compliance. Without enforcement, the standard is a suggestion, and in construction, suggestions do not save lives.
State-level enforcement is more encouraging in some places. Several states have stepped up protections for heat illness, work zone safety and OSHA fine levels, independent of the federal posture. New Jersey's increases to penalty amounts for safety violations were a specific example Parsons praised. When fines are meaningful, he said, companies listen. When they are pennies on the dollar, companies factor them into operating costs and move on.
The LHSFNA: What a Labor-Management Fund Can Do
The Laborers' Health and Safety Fund of North America was created in 1988 alongside two other LIUNA funds: the LIUNA Training and Education Fund, which handles skills training, and the Laborers and Employers Cooperatives Education Trust, which works with signatory contractors on growing union work. The Health and Safety Fund's board of trustees is split evenly between labor and management representatives and approves everything the fund does. That structure, Parsons said, reflects the vision of labor and management leaders who recognized that safety had to be a shared priority, not a management concession.
He was careful to note that the signatory contractors represented on the fund's board do not speak for the entire industry. Non-union contractors who cut corners on safety do not share that vision, and the fund's existence does not change their behavior. It provides LIUNA members with access to expertise, advocacy, training and resources that non-union workers do not have — and ensures that when laborers speak up about a safety issue on the job, they have an institutional infrastructure behind them.
More information on the Laborers' Health and Safety Fund of North America is available at lhsfna.org.
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