California construction workers are more likely than workers in any other industry statewide to be chronically uninsured, according to a Center on Policy Initiatives study.
The California construction industry is expected to gain more new jobs from the federal stimulus package than any other sector, according to the report. Anticipating the industry’s rebound, the CPI study analyzed the quality of construction jobs in terms of wages, health benefits and occupational hazards at the peak of the last construction boom in 2005.
Even in those good times, only 35 percent of construction workers in California had health insurance provided by their employers, compared to half of workers in all industries. Some construction workers relied on publicly funded programs like Medi-Cal, but 27 percent were completely uninsured for the whole year, and more than 40 percent were uninsured for at least part of the year.
Union construction jobs were 28 percent more likely to have health insurance than similar nonunion jobs. Collective bargaining creates multi-employer trust that provide portable health coverage for a mobile workforce that frequently changes jobs, the report said.
The construction industry accounts for 15 percent of the state’s chronically uninsured workers, more than twice its share of the workforce. Yet compared to other industries, a construction worker is 4.6 times more likely to die on the job than the average private industry worker, the report indicated. In fact, more than one-in-five reported poor health during the past month that affected their work and other activities.
Almost one-fourth of construction industry workers are self-employed, the report stated. Among the rest, 30 percent had worked less than two years with their current employer. More than 120,000 California construction workers are in occupations with average pay below $30,000 per year, the report stated.
The report analyzed data from a statewide survey and also includes stories of the personal impact: a 55-year-old concrete carpenter who is diabetic but skips his prescriptions some months and hasn’t sought care for a painful lump in his side; and an electrician whose young family went without dental checkups until he became unemployed and qualified for Medi-Cal.
Topics California Construction
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