The Cost of Doing Business in North Texas
By Texas Electrician (Worker Correspondent)
In late December, 2024, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) published its findings1 after an investigation – which began in July, 2024 – of repeated workplace safety violations committed by Bandera Utility Contractors LLC., headquartered at
5750 Genesis Ct.
Ste. 100
Frisco, TX 75034
The working-class men and women of this company put their lives on the line daily to ensure that neighbors, loved ones, friends, and other working people in Texas’s Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex region have the utilities infrastructure necessary to carry on our daily lives.
After a formal complaint spurred the investigation, OSHA Area Director Timothy Minor found that Bandera “repeatedly exposed its workers to serious hazards by sending them into unprotected trenches without providing a means of escape” on a project in Fort Worth, TX.
To explain why it is important to reinforce the walls of a trench and provide an easily accessible means of escape, consider this: One cubic yard of soil (that’s 3 feet wide, 3 feet tall, and 3 feet long) can weigh up to 3000 pounds. In a trench collapse, the amount of soil settling is significantly larger. Workers can be crushed beyond rescue in only a moment, buried alive and unable to draw another breath for the weight surrounding their bodies. This is the stuff of nightmares.
It is, however, easily preventable. Tried and true methods of protecting workers in a trench include shoring, sloping, and shielding. Shoring utilizes mechanical outward pressure on the walls of the trench to prevent a collapse. Sloping requires excavating a wider footprint in the terrain at an inclined or stepped profile, turning any collapse into a slow and manageable slide. Shielding uses what is called a trench box, where workers can safely labor within protective walls.
Occupational safety also demands that for all excavations exceeding 4 feet in depth a means of egress must be no further than 25 feet from any worker in any direction. However, Bandera, which sees its “human resources” as expendable when weighed against productivity and profit, frequently neglects providing even the barest of these standard protections.
Even in instances where ladders were available, the investigation found they had “structural defects, such as, but not limited to, broken or missing rungs, cleats, or steps, broken or split rails, corroded components, or other faulty or defective components.”2 In another instance, the ladder used for egress was too short to exit safely.3
For these egregious violations of basic workplace safety and others, on 23 December 2024, Area Director Timothy Minor proposed a penalty totaling $107,228.00.4 You may be saying to yourself, “Wow! That’s a hefty chunk of change!” To a working stiff like you or me, it would be. You could almost afford a down payment on a house with that kind of salary. However, for an LLC like Bandera, whose website boasts $440 million in revenue over the last decade,5 this is chump change. Consider also that, based on public records provided by the city of Fort Worth, where these incidents occurred, Bandera Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Hicks bid $159,743,220 to build this new wastewater development.6 So this penalty is less than ⅒ of 1% of the total bid on the project.
Not even a slap on the wrist, this so-called penalty is barely a flick on the ear.
If you keep your ear to the ground, you may occasionally hear conservatives – be they relatives, neighbors, or even coworkers – whine that OSHA is a shining example of government overreach and harsh regulations harming the freedoms of commerce and business and property rights. You may have heard your own boss complain about unaccountable G-Men who come to investigate their private property and employment practices, who threaten them with draconian penalties that might even put them out of business entirely! This is a charade, though. It is company talk – capitalist talk – meant to get workers to point their pitchforks at a nominally protective state apparatus rather than at the people who exploit us for most of our waking hours week after week.
In truth, OSHA is little more than a nuisance to the American capitalist. Visits by their agents typically accomplish nothing more than a brief pause in production. No doubt, a pause in production is considered the highest crime to the capitalist, but it’s actually important and necessary to people who actually do the laboring. When penalties are assessed, they amount to little more than the cost of doing business.
To further demonstrate the toothlessness of OSHA; to further show that the consequences the Administration places on errant employers are insufficient to prevent future violations, let’s look at one more case.
A little after 9:00 AM, on 24 June 2022 – just over 2 years prior to Bandera’s latest visit by these relentless government bureaucrats – 41-year-old Jose Paulin Sanchez Navarro and an unnamed worker were repairing a sewer line in a 10 foot deep trench in McKinney, TX. In what appears to be common practice for Bandera, glossy website photos notwithstanding, the trench was unprotected. In this case, the walls collapsed. The unnamed worker was able to avoid being crushed and was pulled out alive, though, doubtless, traumatized.
Mr. Sanchez Navarro was not so fortunate, however. He was crushed and asphyxiated under a mass of soil before he could be rescued.
The investigation that followed found that the employer failed to have a competent person inspect the trench for hazards, which is required at the start of each work day and periodically throughout as ground conditions change. It also found that egress ladders were not only damaged, but again too short to allow for a safe exit. Finally, OSHA found that Bandera “willfully” exposed employees to cave-in hazards.7 The result of this willful negligence was the death of one of our class. He left his home one morning to put food on the table for his family, and he never came back. Footage of his funeral service shows a despondent wife, sobbing in black and consoled by her daughters. Also in attendance were several coworkers in hi-viz safety vests and hard hats. All toss flowers on to Brother Sanchez Navarro’s casket as the deceased is buried a second and final time.8
You may wonder what is the price of this man’s life. How much does it cost a multi-million dollar business owner to get away with murder? It turns out the penalty assessed for the “serious” and “willful” violation of federal law that caused the death of this brother in toil was $130,524. The grand total from all the violations found in this investigation amounted to $165,952. This penalty did nothing to convince Bandera to change its safe-work protocols, as two years later we see similar violations. How long will it be before the invaluable life of another worker is snuffed out in the mud by this careless contractor?
This New Worker correspondent reached out to Bandera’s Safety Coordinator, Eduardo Hernandez. The company’s website says Mr. Hernandez has been a member of the Bandera team for 3 years. This puts him in the company at the time of Jose Paulin’s killing, though I was unable to confirm he was the Safety Coordinator at the time. Bandera’s website also boasts that Hernandez’s “attention to detail ensures that every job is completed with the highest safety and quality standards.”9 Asked if he felt the results and charges of the most recent OSHA investigation were reasonable and accurate, Hernandez said, “I think that’s already been resolved in a meeting. I don’t really know exactly what happened with that.” So much for attention to detail. When asked if the company has taken corrective actions in response to the shortcomings OSHA found, Hernandez simply said, “Yes,” but was unable to provide specifics. After being asked how long he’s been in the Safety Coordinator position, Mr. Hernandez said he had to take a call on his other line and promptly hung up. I have not been able to obtain further comment.
Texas is a particularly dangerous state to be a construction worker. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report from 2023 (the last year we have complete data), construction and utilities workers accounted for 137 of the 564 workplace fatalities that year.10 That’s just shy of 25% of all worker deaths in Texas. The cause, though, contrary to what many liberals and even conservatives may claim, is not simply a lack of enforcement of already existing rules and regulations. And the solution is not more or even stronger rules and regulations. The harsh reality is that for the capitalist who breaks the rules and destroys lives there are no consequences. It costs them nothing to annihilate us or ignore us.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was offered by the capitalist US government as a pacifier to the working class. In truth, the ruling capitalist class will never allow the Administration to have enough authority to meaningfully punish bad actors. When a working man is killed while making a wealthy man richer, the wealthy man doesn’t even have to front the cost of a funeral, much less worry about prison time. The primary flaw in this method of reform is that it puts the onus of work conditions and safety squarely on the shoulders of the person who is least interested in it. The capitalist’s sole, guiding interest is always, always, always increasing profit. Creating a safe work environment costs time – Labor-Time – which is the most precious commodity any capitalist purchases. Labor-Time is the one commodity from which springs all of their profits. Thus, allocating that time toward any activity other than production is considered a loss to the capitalist. It’s money wasted in their eyes. The capitalist will only ever abide such a waste to the extent that he is forced to.
It is time to build a society in which the workers who produce everything we need in our daily lives have primary say over how they are produced and how safely the jobs get completed. We can no longer rely on these capitalists to “know better” or “look out” for us. We can no longer be expected to work faster and for longer hours just to fill their pockets, while our wages continue to be worth less and less. They see us as replaceable. It is high time we start seeing them as unnecessary. It is time for us to take control of our lives both on and off of the clock!
Footnotes
[1] https://www.osha.gov/news/newsreleases/dallas/20241226
[2]https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/news%20releases/OSHA2%20Citation%20and%20Notification%20of%20Penalty_1765346_12232024131413.pdf (Page 8 of Citation and Notification of Penalty)
[3] Ibid. (Page 10 of Citation and Notification of Penalty)
[4] Ibid. (Page 11 of Citation and Notification of Penalty)
[5] https://banderautility.com/#team
[6] https://www.fortworthtexas.gov/files/assets/public/v/90/water/documents/developers/water-active-contractors-list.pdf (Page 4)
[7] https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/newsreleases/OSHA20222348.pdf
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmsemB8IDjQ
[9] https://banderautility.com/#team
[10] https://www.bls.gov/regions/southwest/data/fatalworkplaceinjuries_texas_table.htm