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Sanitation Worker's Death Prompts Calls For Safety Changes
John-Paul Rodrigues died July 20 after falling off the back of a sanitation truck in Ossining and sustaining a fatal head injury. His parents want to change safety.
Joe and Malita Rodrigues are on a mission to improve safety among local sanitation workers and have mounted a campaign, with the assistance of their son's labor union, stretching from Ossining Village Hall to Albany.
The couple collected more than 2,000 signatures on a petition calling for new safety measures in the village's sanitation department.
The family also has filed a civil lawsuit against the village and asked unspecified damages in a wrongful-death of their son.
The new safety measures in the village's sanitation department include mandatory safety training for new employees, periodic safety checkups by supervisors, and modification of the platforms at the rear of the trucks to make them wider, more stable and harder to fall off.
According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, solid-waste workers have the seventh-highest mortality rate among all industries, with 48.8 deaths per 100,000 workers. Garbage-truck operations cause five to six fatalities a week across the U.S.
The local CSEA union of Rodrigues covers seven counties in the Mid-Hudson said that five members had died on sanitation duty in the past 18 years.
In December 2004, a 24-year-old Danbury, Connecticut, man was killed when he fell from a garbage truck and was struck by a utility vehicle outside a Route 52 bagel shop.
The accident is being evaluated by the state Public Employee Safety and Health Bureau, which can issue penalties and recommendations for policy changes.