Construction Safety Practices and Immigrant Workers: A Pilot Study

This report is based on surveys conducted with fifty immigrant construction workers in South Florida in 2003. The survey elicited information on the training, personal protective safety practices, and employer safety policies and practices of these workers. The purpose of the study was 1) to document the safety conditions and experiences of these workers, as well as other conditions they face that may be related to their treatment in the safety area; (2) to look for any significant relationships between their safety conditions (measured by degree of safety training, use of personal protective equipment, and employer safety policies and practices) and other factors that theory and previous evidence indicate are probably related (length of residence in the U.S., length of time working in the U.S. construction industry, unionized/non-unionized status, documented/undocumented status, and unskilled/skilled status); and 3) To undertake a preliminary analysis of the results to see if any public policy measures may be promising ways to improve the safety conditions of these workers.

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