Are New York Construction Workers Safer? Depends on How Your Count

On the afternoon of November 6 2023, Francisco Lumbreras, 52, was working for a website preparation contractor within the Bronx making use of grease with a grease gun to a becoming positioned behind a ready-mix ship truck. He took a step or two again, based on federal security data, when his garments have been caught by the rotating shaft that drives the vibration air valves.

He tried to free himself from the spinning shaft, and a coworker heard him shout and turned off the ability. However by then Lumbreras had had been pulled in, chopping and crushing his higher physique, killing him.

New York Metropolis has characterised 2023 as a 12 months of building security success, at the very least in the case of constructing building tasks, the place town mentioned there have been solely seven fatalities, down from 11 in 2022, based on the Dept. of Buildings. The 12 months 2023 marked the primary 12 months for Carlos’ Regulation, a statewide measure which will increase penalties for legal company legal responsibility in instances involving employee deaths or severe accidents.

The difficulty is, how a lot security progress you possibly can rely in New York Metropolis and New York State relies upon drastically on how the counting is finished and who does it.

These variations have been by no means clearer than in current weeks.

A brand new report from the New York State Committee for Occupational Security and Well being (NYCOSH), a watchdog and advocacy group, mentioned building fatalities in New York Metropolis continued to rise, noting that 30 building employees died in New York Metropolis in 2023, in comparison with 24 in 2022 and 20 in 2021. 

New York State, too, had seen “a pointy improve of 48%” in building fatalities in these years, mentioned the NYCOSH report, rising from 50 fatalities in 2022 to 74 in 2023. The report famous the excessive variety of Latinx employees in accidents and mentioned there have been extra accidents at open-shop employers. Security enforcement wanted extra assets, NYCOSH beneficial.

Security Information Variations

Samantha Fisher, the primary creator of the NYCOSH report, mentioned in an e mail that the distinction in numbers between NYCOSH and town’s Dept. of Buildings is that the division has a narrower scope and that its “essential focus is public security, not monitoring each employee fatality.” NYCOSH, she explains, casts a broader informational web in researching deadly accidents in all kinds of building, not simply building-related. And he or she famous that the Dept. of Buildings knowledge 12 months might not match up with that of federal security databases.

This month, for the primary time, New York State’s open-shop contractors issued a pointy denunciation of the report from NYCOSH, whose funding sources embrace unions, saying its knowledge was deceptive and that its conclusions and findings have been motivated by anti-open store bias.

“As a substitute of presenting an sincere evaluation, NYCOSH inflates fatality numbers by together with incidents unrelated to constructing building, akin to window washing to mislead the general public and policymakers,” the state’s chapter of the Related Builders and Contractors claims in a press launch.

 
Chapter President Brian Sampson mentioned that  yearly in its report “NYCOSH counts non-construction-related incidents to magnify the variety of fatalities.” The ABC chapter cites the improved security statistics famous by the New York Metropolis Dept. of Buildings. 

The 12 months 2023 marks, says Sampson, “a nine-year low in constructing construction-related fatalities which straight contradicts NYCOSH’s declare of 30 deaths. The truth is that building in New York Metropolis is getting safer.”