Substance Use Disorders and Suicide in Construction - with Keith Prendergast

This episode‘s guest is Keith Prendergast, Safety Manager at A. Murphy, Inc, and a Local 103 IBEW Safety Committee member. With a modest upbringing and decades in the construction trades as an electrician, as well as recovery from substance use disorder, he has been an active member in the union’s efforts to help workers recover from substance use and address workplace mental health. Construction generates nearly $1.8 trillion for the U.S. economy. The industry has more than 753,000 employers, with over 7.8 million employees, to the U. S. economy each year. While the industry is a significant contributor to the economy, it comes at a cost from a psychological health and safety perspective. The construction industry has the second highest rate of suicide in the United States at 53.3 per 100,000 workers, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). In the U.S., nearly 45,000 Americans die by suicide each year — one person every 12 minutes. And for every death, there are more than 22 suicide attempts. In this episode, we’ll be talking about a serious topic, but we’ll be talking about it from a hopeful perspective from the perspective of workers, and in this case, union workers helping each other.