Construction

Safety Group Calls for Action on Construction Job Fatalities

A coalition of safety advocates and labor groups in New York has released a report they say underscores the need for action on construction fatalities in the state. Find out what’s in the report and what the group wants to see changed.

On the steps of City Hall, the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) released its latest construction fatality report, Deadly Skyline: An Annual Report on Construction Fatalities in New York State. According to the report, “employers routinely violate legal regulations with impunity.” NYCOSH is calling for legislation including measures to boost training requirements for construction workers and mandatory apprenticeship programs on certain construction sites to create safer job sites.

Among findings, the fatality report highlighted the following:

  • Workplace fatality rates are trending upward in New York’s construction industry.
  • Non-union construction sites are especially dangerous.
  • Employers who violate health and safety laws also cause worker fatalities.
  • Latino construction workers face a disproportionate fatality risk due to falls and employers’ willful violations of health and safety laws.
  • Wage and hour violators are more likely to also be safety and health violators.

NYCOSH included these and other recommendations in the report:

  • Require adequate training and education, such as the OSHA 10-hour training course for all New York City construction workers and apprenticeship programs for crews on large projects.
  • Preserve the Scaffold Safety Law and pass a New York State Safety Act to require workers to be licensed.
  • Pass new criminal contractor legislation to establish effective penalties against contractors whose willful negligence causes a worker fatality.
  • Consider revoking licenses for employers convicted of felonies that cause a worker fatality.
  • Develop new enforcement strategies.
  • Better protect Latino workers.

See the full report at http://www.nycosh.org.

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