Two workers were killed Friday, October 24, in a crane accident during the demolition of an old fuel terminal in Everett, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. The crane, which was mounted on a barge, toppled over while workers were cutting pipes for the Everett Landco redevelopment project. Preliminary information suggests a cable may have snapped. 

The incident in Everett occurred at a redevelopment site on the Mystic River where a former ExxonMobil fuel terminal is being demolished to make way for a new commercial complex. A large crane, mounted precariously on a barge, toppled over while dismantling the old facility, killing two men. One worker was pronounced dead at the scene, while the other succumbed to his injuries in the hospital.

The victims have been identified as Paul Ledwell Jr., 37, and Larriston Lake, a father of four. According to NBC10 Boston, Lake’s close friend spoke to his widow right after the catastrophe. “His wife had called me last night, just crying and bawling about how the last time he heard him he was giving his daughter a kiss before he went to work and she was just crying about how she didn’t get to hear him one more time on her lunch break,” Roy White said. “It’s horrible.”

The two men were members of the Piledrivers and Divers Local 56, which issued a perfunctory statement mourning the loss of the workers and claiming the union puts “a strong emphasis on prioritizing our efforts to ensure the safety of our members.”

The deaths of the two construction workers are the latest casualties in the relentless industrial slaughter waged daily against workers at construction sites and other workplaces across the US. In the days and weeks prior to the crane collapse there were a number of workplace fatalities in construction and other industries.

Some recently reported deaths include:

• October 23: A 52-year-old construction worker, Jorge Sanchez, died after falling more than 100 feet into a pit at a site in New York City. Sanchez was working at the Gateway Tunnel project on the west side in Manhattan. The construction site has been closed following the fatal incident, but no details have yet been reported.
• October 13: 28-year-old Sy Doan was killed after being crushed by a hydraulic press while he was working at a First Solar facility in Perrysburg Township, Ohio.
• October 3: A contractor working at a powerhouse outside of Marquette in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was killed and another hospitalized after being overcome while working inside a large pipe. The 40-year-old painter and a coworker were applying an overcoating inside a penstock, a pipe-like structure that carries water at the power plant

The underlying cause of fatalities such as these is the increasing drive for profit at the expense of the working class.

For the companies involved in Everett, the redevelopment of a waterfront property is a source of immense potential profit; for the workers, it was a death trap. Their deaths are an indictment of a social order where the safety of those who produce all of society’s wealth is treated as an obstacle to the enrichment of the corporate and financial elite.

An examination of the details surrounding the crane collapse reveals a familiar and deadly pattern of corporate operations. Through a web of contractors and subcontractors, the entities profiting from the project create layers of legal and financial distance from the hazardous work itself, placing workers in mortal danger while absolving themselves of direct responsibility.

Exxon Mobil was the previous owner of the site. Everett Lanco owns the redevelopment project, while the primary contractor is Charter Contracting. An unnamed subcontractor is listed as the victims’ actual employer.

The Everett collapse is the latest in an alarming and documented pattern of fatal construction accidents across Massachusetts, demonstrating a systemic disregard for safety protocols in the pursuit of profit. A review of near-misses and workplace fatalities in the past two years reveals a pattern of criminal negligence by big business and their political frontmen in both corporate controlled parties.

• July 2023, Boston Seaport: Falling debris and crane instability at a Suffolk Construction site prompted a citywide safety pause and exposed dangerous conditions.
• June 2024, Medford: A hydraulic crane tipped over at a warehouse conversion site, injuring one worker. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited the subcontractor for improper ground stabilization.
• January 2025, Worcester: A tower crane section buckled due to mechanical failure during high winds, forcing an emergency evacuation of the site.
• September 11, 2025, Southeastern Massachusetts: A 42-year-old crane operator was crushed to death while disassembling a 600-ton crane. A subsequent investigation revealed that no pre-disassembly safety meeting was held, leading to a $4.35 million wrongful death settlement.

In response to this wave of death and injury, particularly the Suffolk Construction incident, the city of Boston enacted a new Construction Safety Ordinance in December 2023. This measure has been exposed as bureaucratic window-dressing. It requires contractors to sign safety affidavits and appoint site safety coordinators, but does nothing to challenge the fundamental economic pressures—speedups, corner-cutting on materials and the use of cheap labor—that are the real source of danger to workers. As the continued fatalities prove, this toothless ordinance places the burden of paperwork on companies while the agency tasked with enforcing workplace safety, OSHA, is left off the hook.

In the last decade, Massachusetts has recorded over 170 construction worker fatalities caused directly by workplace injuries and incidents, according to the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (MassCOSH) in its annual “Dying for Work” report.

Totals for yearly workplace deaths in the state have fluctuated between 12 and 22 per year, with construction consistently the most dangerous sector, often accounting for more than a third of all statewide fatalities. Roughly 13 to 22 deaths each year are attributable to falls, electrocutions, crush injuries and other traumatic incidents at construction sites.

OSHA is a chronically underfunded and politically compromised agency whose primary function is to provide a thin veneer of accountability for the dangerous conditions endemic to capitalist production. The agency hands out minuscule fines to major corporations, and its enforcement power has been systematically dismantled by successive Democratic and Republican administrations.

The agency has been subjected to a frontal assault under the Trump administration through sweeping deregulatory initiatives. A mandate requiring the repeal of 10 regulations for every new one issued has frozen the implementation of new safety standards. More ominously, the administration moved to gut the General Duty Clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the agency’s “principal tool for addressing hazards not explicitly covered by existing rules.”

The Supreme Court’s overturning in 2024 of the so-called Chevron deference—which held that courts should defer to a government agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute—stripped OSHA of its minimal enforcement power. The legal foundation for virtually all of OSHA’s standards was eroded, opening the door for corporations to challenge any and all safety rules in court. The ongoing OSHA investigation into the Everett collapse, therefore, will not result in any meaningful justice for the victims or substantive changes to prevent future deaths

The tragedies in Massachusetts are a microcosm of the daily carnage taking place in America’s industrial slaughterhouse. Across the country, the drive for profit maims and kills workers with sickening regularity. On average, more than 100 workers are killed at work each week. This official figure is a vast underestimation, as deaths from occupational diseases caused by chronic exposure to toxins are estimated at 20 times the official workplace fatalities figure.

The epidemic of workplace deaths makes clear that worker safety cannot be entrusted to the corporations, the capitalist state or the pro-corporate trade union bureaucrats. Far from defending their members, the union leadership actively collaborates with management to suppress information and cover up corporate negligence.

After Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. was crushed to death in Michigan on April 7, 2025, the United Auto Workers worked with the company to stonewall the release of any information. Meanwhile, major unions like the Teamsters have endorsed Trump’s appointment as labor secretary of Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who has overseen the gutting of OSHA.

The only alternative is direct worker oversight and control over workplace safety. This requires the building of rank-and-file committees in every factory and workplace, independent of the pro-company union apparatus. The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) has initiated this fight. Its independent investigation into the death of Ronald Adams Sr., which held a public hearing to take testimony from workers and safety experts, stands as a model for how workers can fight for the truth and for safe conditions.