Building Futures held an event for Rhode Island Construction Safety Week on Wednesday to discuss the “We’ve Got Your Back” campaign, created to address the twin epidemics of mental health and substance use disorders within the construction industry. The event highlighted staggering statistical data, including that 1 in 5 overdose deaths in Rhode Island was a construction worker and that nationally, 52 workers die daily from suicide or overdose. The “We’ve Got Your Back” campaign reflects a collective, industry-wide culture shift and celebrates the power of peer-led support and personal stories of recovery.
Building Futures, says the org’s website, seeks to meet employer needs for skilled workers through Registered Apprenticeships, creating equitable paths to family-sustaining careers for Rhode Islanders.
Here’s the video:
When Joe Simons, a longtime construction worker, was dealing with his addiction, there wasn’t the kind of support being offered today. He told his story of moving from addiction to peer counselor, helping others in the building trades deal with their addiction and mental health issues.
“I’ve been clean 23 plus years. Some of the people here know who I am from that journey I took. I get emotional and excited about this because when I got clean, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who to go to. Luckily, I had family members who said, “Try this, try that,” so I got clean. I’m working. I ran into my old apprenticeship director at Brown University, and he goes, “Hey, I heard you’re doing great. That’s awesome. We had you pegged as dead or in jail.”
“That was my recovery back then. I’m not dead. I’m not in jail.
“My Business Agent said, ‘Hey, they’re doing this Building Futures peer training. Why don’t you go for it?’ I’m like, ‘I’m all in.’ So I came here, [but] some of the people in this room that know that when I went through early recovery 23 years ago, there wasn’t really much kid gloves, right? And I’m not used to kid gloves. I’m a former Marine. My father was hardcore. That’s my life. Some of the people I hung around with, you didn’t do the kid glove stuff.
“So I met Mike, and I went through the peer training. I get home, I say to my wife, ‘I don’t like this guy.’ I’m like, ‘We’re going to have a talk.’ So I call Mike, and I’m like, ‘Hey, listen, I don’t agree with this. I don’t agree with that.’ And Mike did what he did. He hit me with a social work degree, and I’m like, ‘All right. All right. I understand.’ I didn’t, but I’m like, ‘I’m going to get on board with this.’ So, through the peer trainings, I realized the importance of this and saw Mike putting in so much work.
“I call myself boots on the ground. I am a construction worker. I don’t work in an office. This is what I do. I’m on the job sites. When I met Mike, I was at Amazon. There were 150 people [on that job]. I was able to get Mike there pretty quickly once I got on site, and I believe all the test strips and Narcan went.
“I had a guy running the job that didn’t know who I was. He realized quick who I was because I told him. I pulled the guy off a job site; that guy’s now clean. He went to treatment. He just bought a house. You know what I mean? What everybody’s doing here as a construction worker, seeing what you all are doing, is incredible to me. My job, I feel, is to tell people that there is hope available.
“The business agents are on the sites. I know you guys are busy and have other things to do, so to take time out of your schedule… I try to get the people to believe that they do care about us. They want to see us do the right thing. They want to see us to get help. And that’s what I feel my job is: to let people know that we have their backs.
“This campaign is incredible. When I go to job site visits, we talk about it. You don’t want to come and talk to me? That’s fine. Mike’s got the banner up. We got the porta-john stickers. We got the hard hat stickers. Back in the day, when I was all messed up, I usually went to the porta-john to do stuff other than go to the bathroom. So, to have an opportunity now, if you’re going through something, to scan it and pull up all the help you need is incredible.
“From the guy that was told we had you pegged as dead or in jail, to now somebody that can be standing up in front of people ... You know what I mean? As a man in the trenches, in construction, it means a lot to people in our industry that management’s coming together... They want to help us. Getting that point across is something I try to do. I’m fortunate to be involved in this. I am going to stay involved, and I hope Mike stays on board and everybody keeps doing what they’re doing to get the people help.”
Cathy Schultz, Director of the Governor’s Overdose Taskforce and a person in long-term recovery, explained that data from the state’s overdose reporting system identified the construction industry as a critical area for intervention, which led to the partnership with Building Futures. “We looked at employment, and you just heard the same statistics that I’m going to repeat now: one in five people who died from an overdose works in the construction industry, so we knew we needed to do something. We knew we needed to put resources towards this, and what better partnership than with Building Futures?
“One important lesson I know, as a person in recovery, is that no one can do this alone,” said Shultz. “The community is the core to recovery. The opposite of addiction is connection, and I think it’s really important that we look at We’ve Got Your Back [as a] true example of how peer-led and industry-connected programs help reduce stigma and make it easier for people to speak up and ask for help early.”
Michael Currier, the program’s recovery director, shared the daily toll of the crisis, stating that 17 construction workers die by suicide and 45 by overdose every day nationally. He stressed that these were preventable deaths. He also spoke about the We’ve Got Your Back Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), a non-binding set of guiding principles for mental health and substance use prevention, signed by union officials, construction contractors, and recovery pathways in the construction industry.
“The MOU provides a roadmap for how to move forward,” said Currier. “We want everyone to seek recovery. The average worker, if they get kicked off one site, finds a job at another site. It doesn’t do any good to fire somebody. We’re trying to create and maintain a pathway so that if someone is impaired, we get them the help they need and we get them back to work. And that’s what’s happening.
“There’s so much stigma around mental health and substance use disorder, but who in this room isn’t affected by mental health or substance use on some level or another?” asked Currier. “Your family or kid... every single person [is impacted], yet we have this stigma around it that just needs to go. Today, 17 people in the construction industry will die by suicide. 45 people will overdose.”
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has identified the leading causes of worker deaths in the construction industry, responsible for over 60% of construction fatalities annually. Dubbed the “fatal four,” these hazards are falls, struck-by objects, electrocution, and caught-in-between incidents.
“The fatal four kill about 1,200 people a year. Suicide and overdose kill 20 times that,” said Currier. “There’s movement towards making sure that this makes its way to the fatal four: it’ll be the fatal five pretty soon. Fifty-two people will die by suicide and overdose in the construction industry today. That’s somebody’s wife, kid, or father who isn’t going to make their way home.”
