BOSTON -- An annual worker safety report due to be released Thursday, but obtained early by Team 5 Investigates, charges that preventive measures that could be saving workers' lives are often ignored.

Team 5 Investigates' Janet Wu reported Wednesday that 76 Massachusetts workers died on the job in 2006. The findings are part of an annual labor report, Dying for Work in Massachusetts: The Loss of Life and Limb in Massachusetts. It is put out each year by the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and MassCOSH (Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health).

On April 3, 2006, Ida Beane said she first heard there had been a horrible accident at a Boston construction site on the television news. It was the same site where her son, Robert, was a foreman. Usually he called immediately to assure his mother.

"I waited for the cell phone call," she said. "But when the phone rang, it was her daughter, sobbing. Nearly one year later, Ida and Wayne Beane have visited their son's grave every day. Somewhere there has got to be an answer," she said. "That's what I'm looking for, just an answer."

Wayne Beane said, "Someone is messing up somewhere and we got to get it straight." Beane said he doesn't want other families to suffer through what his family has endured.

Beane was one of 76 workers killed on the job last year in Massachusetts. The Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health said these are not simply accidents that happened, that there is a common thread: preventive measures are being disregarded.

Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, the executive director of MassCOSH, said "In many cases, there's basic safety measures, fixing faculty equipment, checking equipment, safety harnesses. Simple things."

Of the 76 workers who died on the job in 2006, 17 were killed while working on the rails, road construction or by a truck rollover. Nearly as many died from falls at construction sites. The average age of workers killed is 43 years.

Ida Beane said her son was working for a subcontractor that day, but Bostonian Masonry paid the OSHA fine, negotiating it down from $119,000 to $99,000 for the accident that killed three people that day.