Living in Panama

[freddym]

I been thinking about living in Panama. lived here in Costar rica for more than ten years and just wanting to make changes in my life but seen they got plenty of trouble this week with riots with molotof cocktails and tear gas and such all over the copuntry. La Nacion newspeper reports today they have locked up more than 500 people taken from construction sites and 25 hurt in trouble between construction workers and the police

Anyone know more about this? Why this is happenin?

[grb1063]

25 construction workers have died on high rise projects in 2007 in Panama, which is 3 times more than die in high rise projects in the entire US. Apparently, the construction workers are deeply concerned about the lack of job site safety. Unlike the US, if someone dies on your job site it will be a struggle to save your business due to insurance and phenomenal workermen’s compensation rates.

[soflodoug]

I have been speaking directly to someone who is heavily involved with the development industry in panama and I was informed that in the colon area this problem started with a labor dispute where a construction worker was going to aggressively assault a police officer and was shot and killed in defense of the officer. This sparked other demonstrations,however I was told it was workers sitting in the street in panama city,spuratically burning tires however no other violence had occured against any persons. Again this was verbally reported to me and i have no other concrete information,however I deem the source reliable for the immediate panama city area and I also spoke to other people who eventually made it to work on the day this started with no other issues.

[soflodoug]

I can also say that i personally observed construction workers on a high rise building not wearing a safety harness near the edge of a high floor on a building in panama city. I think there is a problem with the workers observing rules and regulations at times.

[grb1063]

I have little doubt that not observing the safety rules is much more prevalent in Panama City than in Seattle, primarily due to enforcement. Steel worker’s, however, are notoriuos for being the rebels of the high rise industry and observing any rules. For instance, in Seattle the State Labor & Industries Department would fine you roughly $3,000 during routine periodic inspections or complaint inspection and it would affect your “Experience Factor” rating for 3 years. This would typically increase your workemen’s comepensation rates from roughy $2.70/HR to $3.00/HR X 112,000 annual labor hours (my company) = $33,600 per year more for 3 years. Thus, the fine are the “actual damages” and the rate impacts are “punitive damages”. The entire cost could be as much $110,800 over three years.
In the US, many workemen’s compensation systems have “participants” than act as a pooling of funds. If the amount of these pooled premiums is greater than the cost of the permiums for that year, the surplus pool gets proportionate distributed among the “partiipants”. We call this a “retro-refund” in the construction business. As with all balanced measrues (there are so few), it works both ways and you can profit by being safety concious.

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