Injured worker Felipe
Marco has been left to cover thousands in medical bills on his own.
By Dom
DiFurio 6:00 AM on Feb 26,
2020
Experienced carpenter
Felipe Marco showed up at a First Texas Homes worksite in Cedar Hill in August,
expecting a routine day of framing a new home. But on this Thursday, as Marco
took measurements, the scaffolding holding him collapsed.
He fell 7 feet onto a
2-by-4, where he dangled from the second story of the home until co-workers
could help him down. He couldn’t take deep breaths and was experiencing pain in
his chest. His boss on the construction site drove him to Methodist Dallas
Medical Center, where he stayed overnight. There, he learned that he had broken
six ribs and perforated a lung when he landed on the horizontal support beam.
The 40-year-old was
unable to work for a month and a half while he recovered and he racked up
roughly $28,000 in medical bills. Now he’s caught in a common predicament for
Texas construction workers: Who pays the bill?
En route to the
hospital, Marco said, his boss — a subcontractor for a subcontractor on the
project — told him he’d be covered for two weeks’ pay. But his boss stopped
answering his calls a few weeks into his recovery. He had to take out a loan to
pay rent for his family of five.
A Texas workers’
rights group took up Marco’s cause this week, staging a demonstration outside
First Texas Homes’ corporate office at the Crescent in Dallas’ Uptown district.
Construction workers
often don’t know who hired their direct employer, complicating matters when
injuries occur, said Workers Defense Project staff attorney Sean Goldhammer.
Still, his group believes First Texas Homes should extend workers’ compensation
coverage to Marco and everyone else on its worksites.
What Marco didn’t
know was that his employer was hired for the First Texas Homes project by
another subcontractor, BS&H Investments LLC.
First Texas Homes
said the group’s protest is misplaced and attempts to make an example “out of
an innocent company.” It said it “carries insurance for its own employees.”
“First Texas Homes
takes jobsite safety very seriously and contractually requires each of its
subcontractors carry various levels of liability insurance and/or workers’
compensation coverage for the protection of the subcontractors’ employees,” its
attorney, John D. Sloan Jr., told The Dallas Morning News in
an emailed statement.
On this project,
First Texas Homes’ contract with BS&H Investments required the
subcontractor to maintain liability insurance but not workers’ compensation,
Sloan said. With workers’ compensation insurance, an employee forfeits the
ability to sue his or her employer when injured on the job but receives pay and
medical benefits for a specified amount of time after the injury.
BS&H employee
Henry Sanchez said the company — like Marco — hadn’t heard from its
subcontractor since requesting tax documents from him. Sanchez also said he’s
not aware of BS&H providing workers’ compensation insurance to its
employees or subcontractors hired for projects.
Texas is the only
state in the U.S. that doesn’t require most employers to provide workers’
compensation insurance.
“I would assume that
the main reason that [companies] don’t subscribe to these plans is short-term
profits,” Goldhammer said, who views the practice of hiring subcontractors as a
way for homebuilders to defer responsibility.
Goldhammer said the
goal of Monday’s protest was to persuade builders like First Texas Homes to
offer workers’ comp.
“That’s sort of the
practice that we think is best in the construction industry,” he said. “But we
know that the vast majority of construction companies do not follow that
practice of ensuring that all workers on their sites, not just their employees,
have workers’ compensation coverage.”
The lack of coverage
is costly for workers like Marco, who make up an outsize portion of
uncompensated care costs in Texas.
A study from the
Workers Defense Project and the University of Texas found that while
construction workers make up about 6% of the state’s workforce, they account
for almost 20% of work-related uncompensated care costs in Texas hospitals.
Although he is
working again, Marco said he still has thousands in unpaid medical bills.
“A lot of times
accidents happen on the job, and these people need to be held accountable,” he
said.
Dom DiFurio. Dom is a staff writer covering breaking
business news. He writes about the companies and transactions that shape life
in North Texas. Dom considers himself among the many transplants that moved to
Texas from the crowded coasts who found more than enough reasons to call it
home.
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