A better safety blueprint
No construction worker deserves the fate of Jonathan Lupinski, just 22, who this month plummeted down an elevator shaft in a condo tower rising on Fifth Ave. and suffered fatal head injuries. Or of the dozens of other hardhats who have died on New York City building projects since the start of 2015.
Construction unions have persuaded the great majority of the City Council that a wave of suffering and death amidst a building boom demands an unprecedented mandatory training regimen for all construction workers — no fewer than 59 hours in the classroom.
The city’s own statistics, and experts in construction safety, suggest that’s a good notion gone far too far. Researchers at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recently tallied construction worker fatalities through 2014 and found a trend of gradual decline over the years when measured against the number of workers on the job — a trend that statistics show endures.
Losing 20 workers a year, in any industry, in any city, is tragically far too many — but over time, the odds are improving that New York City hardhats will avoid a terrible end.
The current surge in construction is safer than the one that a decade ago prompted Mayor Mike Bloomberg to ask the City Council to mandate 10 hours of training for all construction sites 10 stories or higher. Construction jobs are only getting less lifethreatening under orders from Buildings Department Commissioner Rick Chandler requiring safety staff on any project four stories or more, with sharply hiked fines for scofflaw contractors.
Could more workers benefit from more instruction on how to stay safe performing inherently dangerous jobs? No question. Fines from the federal safety agency OSHA to employers for inadequate training in 40% of New York City fatalities investigated — the most common safety violation cited — scream yes.
Chandler could start ASAP under his existing authority by expanding the 10-hour training to all workers on all projects.
But the half-cocked Council, with scarcely DOB’s expertise in construction technicalities, specializes in excess, demanding more than two weeks off the job from every laborer, mason, electrician, ironworker, plasterer and carpenter by the tens of thousands in classrooms that don’t yet exist, tuition to be paid by who knows.
No training card, no work. Leave the card at home, and a whole construction site gets shut down — in a system where it already takes eons for an overburdened Buildings Department to give a green light to resume.
Construction jobs ground to a halt sure are safe — when no one’s working, building nothing.