Construction and real estate company executives are teaming with D.C. politicians to weaken laws that protect New York construction workers, who have some of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
The argument is that we need to decrease protections to increase the number of construction projects and meet the demand for new housing. While the city may need more housing, it can achieve that goal without sacrificing the safety of this essential workforce.
Upstate Republican Congressman Nick Langworthy has introduced the Infrastructure Expansion Act, which would preempt a 140-year-old New York State worker safety law, called the Scaffold Law, for federally funded projects. The Scaffold Law was introduced at the time of the first skyscrapers. It protects workers whose job requires them to work on scaffolding or certain other types of equipment that involve working at an elevated height.
Langworthy and the industry executives who back him argue that the Scaffold Law gives workers excessive protections, more than what workers get in other states, and in doing so makes insurance for construction projects too expensive.
What they don’t seem to understand is that New York is the most vertical city in the country. Construction workers are frequently performing tasks hundreds of feet above the street. The insurance premiums here are a little higher than elsewhere, but that’s because the work on New York City high-rises is particularly dangerous.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration Education Center reports that structural iron and steel workers, the brave men and women working on the city’s bridges and skyscrapers, have one of the 10 most dangerous jobs in the country.
The danger appears to be increasing. The number of New York City construction worker deaths totaled 30 in 2023, more than twice as many as in 2020, according to the Deadly Skyline Report issued earlier this year by the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health.
The report proposed that one potential reason for the increase is that inspections by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration saw a steep decline during the pandemic and have not bounced back. In 2023, OSHA conducted 15% fewer inspections in New York State than in 2019, according to the report.
In this environment, decreasing worker protections is a bad idea. The Scaffold Law is aimed at incentivizing employers to provide adequate safety measures. If they don’t, and injuries happen, the law helps to ensure workers are adequately compensated. New York’s construction workers deserve these protections.
Not only are they laboring on new buildings that are vital to the city’s livability and economy, but they are maintaining buildings that already exist. Some of the most hazardous and essential construction work in the city involves façade maintenance. If construction workers are not maintaining facades for all the city’s pre-war buildings then chunks of buildings will literally fall to the crowded sidewalks, as happened earlier this month in the West Village.
Without the protection of the Scaffold Law, workers would be more vulnerable to the whims of builders that may seek to increase profits by cutting the money spent on safety measures. For example, it likely would lead to more use of ladders.
The best general contractors only allow scaffolds, which when built safely are far superior in protecting workers who are working from an elevated height. Scaffolds are more expensive than ladders, and weakening the Scaffold Law decreases the incentive to spend more on scaffolds. In fact, in the OSHA fiscal year 2024 , ladders were the third leading cause of worker safety violations on construction sites. We need less ladders on these sites, not more.
Repeal of these laws will also absolutely allow insurance companies to make more profits at the cost of the lives and health of construction workers.
Additionally, regardless of the pros and cons of the proposed Infrastructure Expansion Act, the laws that regulate safety measures for New York City workers are the purview of the New York City Council and the New York State Legislature, not D.C. politicians.
A relatively simple solution that helps everybody would be the installation of more video cameras on construction sites. Labor advocates have called for state legislation requiring the mandatory use of clear, impartial, time-stamped video footage to document high-risk construction activity. Video surveillance protects workers from dangerous conditions and protects employers from illegitimate claims.
Let’s build New York, but let’s build safely.
Subin is a New York trial attorney who often represents construction workers.
