Rare Prosecution for Construction Worker Death Proves How Little a Worker’s Life is Worth to Capitalists

Tommy Johnson

On October 23^rd, 2021, construction worker Juan Jose Galvan Batalla and an unnamed co-worker were installing a residential wastewater line in Pflugerville, Texas, when the trench they were working in collapsed for the second time that day. Batalla was killed while his co-worker barely escaped with his life.

The two workers had been ordered by their employer, D Guerra Construction, LLC, to return to the already partially-collapsed 13-foot-deep trench hours after notifying the boss that the trench was unstable and unprotected. Batalla was buried alive and brain dead by the time he was taken to the hospital where he died from his injuries. He was only 24 years old. Three years later, a Texas Grand Jury indicted the company and its Project Superintendent Carlos Alejandro Guerrero for criminally negligent homicide.

Such indictments are rare, especially in Texas, the leading state in the country in on-the-job worker deaths. This has led some monopoly media outlets to proclaim this a notable act of justice despite the fact that the conviction carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. In other words, even if a conviction is accomplished, the young Batalla’s life is only worth two years to the ruling class.

The boss who ordered Batalla to dig and enter his own grave was released on a $10,000 personal recognizance bond, meaning he and the company paid nothing out of pocket for his release—he simply had to agree to go to court. The ineffectual arrest comes years after a 2022 OSHA investigation gave the company a citation and $140,000 fine for willfully exposing workers to a cave-in hazard. OSHA then forwarded the case to the Austin District Attorney’s Office.

By the end of the next year, OSHA cited the company again for exposing another worker to a trench cave-in hazard, and by the start of 2024 yet again for a different excavation violation. Most companies do not alter their practice even after multiple OSHA citations, demonstrating how ineffective and toothless the organization is.

250 trench collapse deaths occurred between 2013 and 2023, 20 of which occurred in Texas, according to the liberal bourgeois media outlet NPR. Over that decade, only 11 companies or bosses were criminally charged, none of whom were in Texas. While every trench cave-in death is preventable, companies still refuse to implement the proper safety measures, like using steel boxes that keep the sides from caving in, because such equipment affects profitability by adding overhead costs and prolonging the job. It is more profitable for the boss to just pay a pittance to OSHA in the event they are caught.

OSHA is not the organization the workers want it to be, nor the organization workers need to enforce their safety. An OSHA representative told the Texas Observer that “if OSHA were to inspect every workplace in the country it would take them 185 years.” She commented that it is highly unlikely for an OSHA inspector to ever drive by the small construction sites in the far flung suburbs, calling the chance of such inspections “close to zero.”

When companies are caught red-handed killing their workers with unsafe practices, they serve up the local foreman or supervisor to the old-state, who faces minimal charges, usually reduced to misdemeanors but never result in the kind of jail or prison time faced by average workers. This makes the justice of the ruling class one for those who can afford it, treating workers as nothing more than sacrificial lambs for the all-mighty dollar.

Photo: A secured trench, shown here, prevents the trench from caving in, which is a leading cause of worker deaths in excavation-related activities. Retrieved from constructionequipment.com

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