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NY Times Op-Ed, Jan. 17 2017
2 Years, 31 Dead Construction Workers. New York Can Do Better.
By DOMINIQUE BRAVO
On Dec. 23, on the Upper East Side of New York City, yet another
construction worker died. His name has not yet been released, but he was
the 31st to die on the job in the city in the past two years. He was
working on a nonunion work site, as were 28 of the 30 others. Fabian
Para, who worked nearby, explained that “he was on the third floor, and
he was wearing a harness but wasn’t hooked to a cable, and when he fell,
he just went down.”
Just three weeks earlier, Wilfredo Enriques fell to his death at the old
Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn. Deaths 27 and 28 occurred on Nov. 22,
when a steel beam fell four stories at a Queens job site, crushing
George Smith and Elizandro Enriquez Ramos. Mayor Bill de Blasio said
that the workers’ deaths were a “tragedy” and that “we need to know, of
course, right away whether it was mechanical, or was it human error? We
don’t know yet.”
Actually, we do know; it is abundantly clear: We are in the midst of a
public health epidemic brought on by inadequate safety regulations and
public inattention. Construction-safety lapses happen because it pays
for companies to run the risk of letting them happen. When the dead are
largely foreign born and, in many cases, undocumented, no one much cares.
Spending in the construction industry is at a record high. And yet many
contractors can’t be bothered to pay for training programs and safety
measures, even those required by law, such as installing “fall
protection” systems like nets and railings. The federal agency tasked
with enforcing such safety protocols, the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, is severely understaffed. Between 2011 and 2014, the
number of building permits issued in New York City jumped by more than
18 percent, but the number of OSHA inspectors for all of New York State
dropped by more than 13 percent (as of 2014, there were only 71 left in
the state).
Because there are so few inspectors, only a small fraction of
construction sites are ever inspected. When sites are inspected, not
surprisingly, OSHA finds a high level of violations. And even when
sporadic inspections lead to fines for violations, the fines are too
small to deter misconduct. According to records kept by the New York
Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a nonprofit group that
lobbies for worker safety, of the city contractors that were inspected
from 2009 to 2014, 73 percent had at least one “serious” OSHA violation,
mostly of “fall protection” standards — precisely the violation
responsible for the most deaths.
Predictably, the number of construction injuries and fatalities has
soared. The Department of Buildings recorded a 250 percent increase in
construction injuries from 2011 through 2015, with construction
fatalities increasing each year as well.
It is not a coincidence that a vast majority of preventable accidents
occur at nonunion work sites. Nonunion contractors make up 90 percent of
the construction companies listed in OSHA’s “Severe Violator Enforcement
Program” for New York, a list of recalcitrant employers that have
endangered workers with “indifference to their occupational safety and
health obligations through willful, repeat or failure-to-abate violations.”
Union workers are safer because they are better trained and know they
will be protected if they refuse to work under dangerous conditions.
Building trade unions have apprenticeship programs that teach workers
the required and recommended safety protocols. Further, every union work
site has a shop steward who serves as an advocate for workers with
questions or concerns about their safety. If a contractor or foreperson
tries to cut corners, the workers can, and will, refuse to put
themselves in jeopardy.
New York City can do better. Real egalitarianism is not just about
declaring your city to be a “sanctuary” and blandly committing to
staying true to liberal values, as our mayor has done. It is about
making the hard economic and political choices needed to create a
society that acts on its claims of valuing all life — even if that means
missing out on the generous political contributions of the real estate
industry.
As many New Yorkers brace themselves for the incoming administration of
Donald J. Trump and bemoan the racism and indifference to facts that
they blame as factors in his victory, we ought to spare time for some
soul searching about what is happening right in front of us. Poor
immigrant workers are falling off our buildings and being crushed to
death in our streets. The mayor, public officials and New Yorkers at
large must stop tolerating, indeed condoning, this epidemic of workers
dying “accidentally.”
We need to be outraged. More, we need tough licensing requirements for
contractors, frequent safety inspections, robust worker training and,
yes, support for developers who sign union contracts. It may not be the
cheapest way to build. But it is what a city government and an
electorate true to their ideals should be doing.
Dominique Bravo is the director of Pathways 2 Apprenticeship, a
nonprofit founded by community groups and labor unions that connects
low-income New Yorkers with construction apprenticeships.
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