Solar Workers Lacking Workers' Comp Cover

A study of clean energy workers in Texas shows 70% of solar construction workers who responded to a survey reported that they did not receive workers’ compensation insurance coverage.
The report from the Texas Climate Jobs Project, Cornell University and a group called Organized Power in Numbers, noted that Texas is the only state that does not require employers to participate in a workers’ compensation program. A change to require that coverage is among the study’s recommendations.
The study reviewed working conditions of 1,224 people working in the solar, wind and clean energy manufacturing sectors in Texas.
Among onshore wind construction workers, White workers were more than twice as likely to report receiving workers’ compensation insurance coverage compared to Black and Hispanic survey respondents.
Two-in-five clean energy manufacturing workers reported that they did not have access to any benefits including life insurance, retirement contributions, paid sick leave, or workers’ compensation insurance coverage.
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The National Federation of Independent Business is out with its quadrennial study ranking small business owners’ problems and priorities.
The group’s New York state director, Ashley Ranslow, said that while the cost of providing health insurance ranks as top concern of the state’s independent business leaders, workers’ comp costs ranks higher in New York than other states.
While it ranked nationally as the 29th most-important small business problem, New York business owners ranked workers’ compensation costs as 14th among 75 problems. 24% said it is a critical problem.
Ranslow said lawmakers should take note, as “Workers’ compensation is significantly higher than in the rest of the nation, unemployment insurance is substantially higher. These are issues that state lawmakers can tackle and create.”
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Naloxone isn’t being used enough in the workplace to counteract opioid overdoses, despite high awareness of the drug, the National Safety Council (NSC) said.
In the recently released results of a January survey, the NSC found that while 85% of employers and 78% of employees are aware of naloxone, only 30% of employees said their workplace had naloxone onsite.
Some 46% of employees in workplaces without naloxone onsite do not expect their workplace will begin stocking it.
The majority of the respondents, or 89%, said their workplace had first aid kits, while just 43% of employers and 30% of employees said their workplaces had an opioid overdose response kit.
NSC surveyed more than 500 employers and 800 employees across all industries.
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