B1 · Intermediate
12 min
occupational healthmigrationlabor rightsglobal inequality
The Fire and the Worker: Health, Danger, and Labor in the World
El Fuego y el Trabajador: Salud, Peligro y Trabajo en el Mundo
A fire at a construction site in Moscow killed seven people and injured thirteen more. Fletcher and Octavio use this moment to explore migrant worker health, the construction industry, and the invisible dangers of the world's most deadly job.
Un incendio en una obra de construcción en Moscú mató a siete personas e hirió a trece más. Fletcher y Octavio usan este momento para explorar la salud de los trabajadores migrantes, la industria de la construcción, y los peligros invisibles del trabajo más peligroso del mundo.
6 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| obra de construcción | construction site | El accidente ocurrió en una obra de construcción en el centro de la ciudad. |
| trabajador migrante | migrant worker | Muchos trabajadores migrantes viajan lejos de sus familias para encontrar trabajo. |
| a largo plazo | in the long term | A largo plazo, respirar polvo de sílice puede causar enfermedades graves de los pulmones. |
| deshidratación | dehydration | Los trabajadores que trabajan en el calor tienen un riesgo alto de deshidratación. |
| compensación | compensation | Es muy difícil recibir compensación por un accidente de trabajo si no tienes documentos. |
| seguridad laboral | workplace safety | Las regulaciones de seguridad laboral son más estrictas en Europa que en muchos otros países. |
There was a fire at a construction site in Moscow yesterday.
Seven people dead, thirteen injured.
And I know, fires happen.
Construction sites, industrial accidents, these are not unusual.
But I kept thinking about who those seven people probably were.
Sí, y yo también pensé eso.
Yes, and I thought the same thing.
En Rusia, la mayoría de los trabajadores de construcción no son rusos.
In Russia, most construction workers are not Russian.
Son hombres de Uzbekistán, de Tayikistán, de Kirguistán.
They are men from Uzbekistan, from Tajikistan, from Kyrgyzstan.
Hombres que viajan muy lejos para trabajar.
Men who travel very far to work.
Right, and that's the thread I want to pull on today.
Because construction is the most dangerous industry on earth, and the people doing the most dangerous parts of it are almost always the ones with the least protection.
La construcción mata a más personas que casi cualquier otro trabajo.
Construction kills more people than almost any other job.
En todo el mundo.
All over the world.
Cada año, mueren más de sesenta mil trabajadores en accidentes de construcción.
Every year, more than sixty thousand construction workers die in accidents.
Es un número enorme.
It is an enormous number.
Sixty thousand.
A year.
That's more than the entire population of some towns I've lived near.
And most of those deaths are preventable, which is the part that should be keeping people up at night.
En España, nosotros también tuvimos un problema muy grande con esto.
In Spain, we also had a very big problem with this.
Durante el boom de la construcción, en los años noventa y dos mil, muchos trabajadores inmigrantes llegaron para construir casas, carreteras, estadios.
During the construction boom in the nineties and two thousands, many immigrant workers arrived to build houses, roads, stadiums.
Y muchos murieron.
And many died.
Spain built an enormous amount during that period.
And I remember being in Madrid in 2006, cranes everywhere you looked.
It felt like the city was being assembled in real time.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y detrás de esas grúas había hombres de Marruecos, de Ecuador, de Rumanía.
And behind those cranes were men from Morocco, from Ecuador, from Romania.
Trabajaban muchas horas.
They worked long hours.
Algunos no hablaban bien el español.
Some did not speak Spanish well.
Es muy difícil protegerte cuando no entiendes las instrucciones de seguridad.
It is very hard to protect yourself when you don't understand the safety instructions.
That language point cuts deep.
I've reported from plenty of places where the safety manual exists, in theory, but it's written in the wrong language for the person who needs it most.
Y en Rusia, la situación es muy particular ahora.
And in Russia, the situation is very particular right now.
Antes de la guerra, Rusia tenía muchos trabajadores migrantes de Asia Central.
Before the war, Russia had many migrant workers from Central Asia.
Pero desde 2022, muchas cosas cambiaron.
But since 2022, many things changed.
Changed how, exactly?
Walk me through that.
Bueno, el ejército ruso necesitaba soldados.
Well, the Russian army needed soldiers.
Y algunos trabajadores migrantes en Rusia recibieron papeles para ir a la guerra.
And some migrant workers in Russia received papers to go to war.
A cambio, recibieron dinero o la posibilidad de tener documentos rusos.
In exchange, they received money or the possibility of getting Russian documents.
Algunos aceptaron porque necesitaban el dinero.
Some accepted because they needed the money.
So you have men who came to Russia to pour concrete and lay pipe, and some of them ended up in trenches in Ukraine.
That is a genuinely dark turn.
Es verdad.
It's true.
Y los que no fueron a la guerra, que son la mayoría, continuaron trabajando en condiciones muy difíciles.
And those who didn't go to war, who are the majority, continued working in very difficult conditions.
Menos trabajadores, más trabajo para cada persona, más presión, más accidentes.
Fewer workers, more work for each person, more pressure, more accidents.
More pressure means cutting corners on safety.
And on a construction site, cutting corners on safety is the difference between going home and not going home.
Los trabajadores de construcción tienen cuatro peligros principales: caídas desde altura, objetos que caen, contacto con electricidad, y fuego o explosiones.
Construction workers face four main dangers: falls from height, falling objects, contact with electricity, and fire or explosions.
En este incendio en Moscú, el peligro fue el fuego.
In this Moscow fire, the danger was fire.
Pero los cuatro son muy comunes.
But all four are very common.
The industry has a name for those four.
They call them the Fatal Four.
Falls alone account for something like a third of all construction deaths globally.
A third.
One category.
Y la salud en la construcción no es solo los accidentes inmediatos.
And health in construction is not only the immediate accidents.
También es a largo plazo.
It is also long-term.
Los trabajadores respiran polvo de cemento, de asbesto, de sílice.
Workers breathe dust from cement, asbestos, silica.
Muchos desarrollan enfermedades de los pulmones después de muchos años.
Many develop lung diseases after many years.
Silicosis.
Which is one of those diseases that sounds historical but is absolutely not.
I was researching it this week and the numbers are striking.
Somewhere around twelve thousand workers die from silicosis every year, and those are the counted ones.
En España, tuvimos un problema serio con la silicosis entre los trabajadores que cortaban encimeras de cocina.
In Spain, we had a serious problem with silicosis among workers who cut kitchen countertops.
Encimeras de cuarzo.
Quartz countertops.
Es un material muy popular, muy moderno, pero cuando lo cortas, el polvo es muy peligroso.
It is a very popular, very modern material, but when you cut it, the dust is very dangerous.
Engineered stone.
I've seen reports about that out of Australia too.
Young men, thirties and forties, developing a disease that used to take decades and arriving in their lungs in years because the concentration of silica in engineered stone is so much higher than in natural materials.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y el problema es que los síntomas llegan tarde.
And the problem is that the symptoms come late.
Un trabajador puede respirar el polvo durante diez años y no sentir nada.
A worker can breathe the dust for ten years and feel nothing.
Después, cuando empieza a tener problemas para respirar, ya es demasiado tarde.
Afterwards, when he starts having trouble breathing, it is already too late.
There's a phrase in epidemiology for this kind of delayed harm.
A long latency period.
And it creates a particular political problem: by the time the disease shows up, the company that caused it may not even exist anymore.
Y si eres un trabajador migrante sin documentos, o con documentos temporales, es muy difícil reclamar una compensación.
And if you are a migrant worker without documents, or with temporary documents, it is very hard to claim compensation.
No tienes abogado.
You don't have a lawyer.
No hablas bien el idioma.
You don't speak the language well.
Y tal vez tienes miedo de hablar con las autoridades.
And maybe you are afraid to speak to the authorities.
I want to go back to Russia for a second, because Moscow specifically has had a pattern with this.
Some of the big stadium projects, the Olympic infrastructure in Sochi, there were persistent reports about Central Asian workers in terrible conditions with no real recourse.
Y Qatar, para el Mundial de 2022.
And Qatar, for the 2022 World Cup.
Eso fue muy escandaloso.
That was very scandalous.
Miles de trabajadores migrantes murieron durante la construcción de los estadios.
Thousands of migrant workers died during the construction of the stadiums.
El gobierno de Qatar dijo que no todos los muertos fueron por accidentes de trabajo, pero los periodistas investigaron y los números eran muy malos.
The Qatar government said not all the deaths were from work accidents, but journalists investigated and the numbers were very bad.
The Guardian put the number at over six thousand deaths across South Asian workers building World Cup infrastructure.
Qatar pushed back hard on that methodology, but even their own official figures were damning.
And I covered that story from the margins, really, as part of a broader piece on labor rights in the Gulf.
El problema con Qatar fue también el calor.
The problem with Qatar was also the heat.
Los trabajadores trabajaban en temperaturas de cuarenta o más grados.
Workers worked at temperatures of forty degrees or more.
El calor extremo es muy peligroso para la salud.
Extreme heat is very dangerous for health.
Causa problemas del corazón, deshidratación, golpes de calor.
It causes heart problems, dehydration, heat stroke.
Los trabajadores a veces murieron sin ningún accidente físico visible.
Workers sometimes died without any visible physical accident.
And 'died of cardiac arrest' is how those deaths got classified, which keeps them off the accident statistics.
It's not a conspiracy exactly, it's just that the categories we use to count deaths don't capture what actually happened to these men.
Hay un sistema de reclutamiento que se llama kafala.
There is a recruitment system called kafala.
Existe en Qatar, en Arabia Saudí, en muchos países del Golfo.
It exists in Qatar, in Saudi Arabia, in many Gulf countries.
En este sistema, el trabajador no puede cambiar de trabajo ni salir del país sin el permiso de su empleador.
In this system, the worker cannot change jobs or leave the country without their employer's permission.
Es un sistema de control muy fuerte.
It is a very strong system of control.
Which is debt bondage by another name in a lot of cases.
Workers pay recruiters in Nepal or Bangladesh or India to get the job in the first place, they arrive already in debt, and then they can't leave.
It's a trap with a very clean legal surface.
Y la salud mental también es un problema enorme.
And mental health is also an enormous problem.
Estos hombres están lejos de sus familias, muchas veces durante años.
These men are far from their families, often for years.
Viven en condiciones muy difíciles.
They live in very difficult conditions.
No pueden hablar con un médico fácilmente porque no tienen seguro médico o no hablan el idioma.
They cannot easily speak to a doctor because they don't have health insurance or don't speak the language.
I've sat with men in labor camps in various countries, and there's a particular quality to that loneliness.
It's not the acute loneliness of a bad week.
It's structural.
It's baked into the situation itself, and there's often no relief valve.
Entonces, ¿qué se puede hacer?
So, what can be done?
Algunos países tienen mejores leyes.
Some countries have better laws.
En Europa, las regulaciones de seguridad son más estrictas.
In Europe, safety regulations are stricter.
En España, después del boom y los accidentes, el gobierno mejoró las leyes.
In Spain, after the boom and the accidents, the government improved the laws.
Pero las leyes existen en el papel y también tienen que existir en la realidad.
But laws exist on paper and they also have to exist in reality.
The gap between the law and the inspection is where most of these deaths live.
You can write a perfect safety code and then fund four inspectors for a region the size of Wales and wonder why the numbers don't improve.
En Rusia, la situación es más difícil porque el gobierno tiene otras prioridades ahora.
In Russia, the situation is harder because the government has other priorities right now.
La guerra en Ucrania, la economía, las sanciones.
The war in Ukraine, the economy, the sanctions.
La seguridad de los trabajadores migrantes no es una prioridad política.
The safety of migrant workers is not a political priority.
Y eso es muy triste.
And that is very sad.
Seven people died in that fire yesterday, and we'll probably never know most of their names.
That's the other part of this, the invisibility of it.
A plane crash gets wall-to-wall coverage.
Seven workers in a building fire in Moscow is a paragraph.
Sí.
Yes.
Y eso refleja algo sobre cómo la sociedad valora las vidas de estas personas.
And that reflects something about how society values the lives of these people.
Un turista que tiene un accidente recibe mucha atención.
A tourist who has an accident receives a lot of attention.
Un trabajador migrante que muere en el trabajo, mucho menos.
A migrant worker who dies at work, much less.
Before we wrap, I want to ask you something I noticed earlier.
You said 'a largo plazo' when you were talking about health effects that take years to show up.
And I've heard 'a corto plazo' too.
Is that a fixed pair?
Sí, exacto.
Yes, exactly.
'A largo plazo' significa en el futuro, después de mucho tiempo.
'A largo plazo' means in the future, after a long time.
'A corto plazo' significa pronto, en el futuro cercano.
'A corto plazo' means soon, in the near future.
Y también existe 'a medio plazo', que es entre los dos.
And there is also 'a medio plazo', which is between the two.
Los tres son muy útiles en cualquier conversación sobre economía, salud, política.
All three are very useful in any conversation about economics, health, politics.
Short term, medium term, long term.
We have the same three in English, funnily enough.
Though I notice Spanish locks them together with 'a' and 'plazo' every time.
You can't drop either part.
Correcto.
Correct.
No puedes decir solo 'largo' o solo 'plazo' con ese significado.
You can't say just 'largo' or just 'plazo' with that meaning.
Siempre es 'a largo plazo' como una frase completa.
It is always 'a largo plazo' as a complete phrase.
Por ejemplo: 'A largo plazo, el polvo de construcción es muy peligroso para la salud.' Es una estructura muy común en el español formal e informal.
For example: 'In the long term, construction dust is very dangerous for health.' It is a very common structure in both formal and informal Spanish.
A largo plazo.
I will try to use that this weekend at dinner and probably deploy it in completely the wrong context about whether Spain can win the Euros, and then spend the whole meal explaining what I meant.
España va a ganar.
Spain is going to win.
Eso no es una pregunta de largo plazo ni de corto plazo.
That is not a question of long term or short term.
Es una certeza.
It is a certainty.