Tuesday, September 13, 2016

A lot of worker deaths go uncounted

From Crains:

The Department of Buildings, which regulates construction, only tracks deaths that involve violations of the city’s construction code. The agency counted 12 fatalities in 2015, including that of a woman hit on the head while walking down the street next to a job site (a violation was issued for failure to safeguard the property).

Meanwhile, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration recorded 17 construction-related fatalities in New York City, and did not include the death of the passerby.

The six fatalities that the city didn’t count include a military veteran who fell down an elevator shaft, a construction safety coordinator crushed by a crane, an ironworker who fell from a ladder and a truck driver caught in the driveshaft of his concrete mixer.

In each of the six cases, OSHA issued violations to the workers’ employers for failing to adhere to safety standards for head protection, fall protection and heat stress, among other violations. The agency slapped all of the contractors with fines of thousands of dollars.

But the Department of Buildings said the six deaths were not in its purview. The agency counts only fatalities that involve a threat to public safety—that is, to people other than construction workers.

9 comments:

JQ LLC said...

The expendables of the Gentrification Industrial Complex.

Unless I'm mistaken,that female passerby who got hit was by an Upper West Side building under renovation.

The most gruesome incident, and they all are, was the one (undocumented and illegal immigrant too) on 9th avenue by the hideous makeover of the meatpacking district for tourism and celebrities, when the walls collapsed on top of him,. I wonder if that was the one that got glossed over.

Most vile was the war vet, that was on 8th avenue, another hotel in an over-saturated market, who apparently would have been better off getting killed on duty. At least he would have been acknowledged more properly than this.

(sarc) said...

I am sure that the illegal "undocumented" workers and bystanders injured or killed somehow never make it into the "documentation"...

JQ LLC said...

I was wrong about the female victim, it was the St. Vincent's hospital, the place that was a big part of the treatment and healing of people injured and distraught on 9/11. Which is even more revolting, and terribly ironic because she was a realtor.

Anonymous said...

That's because some were probably illegals. My father told me that there was a guy he worked with who was fixing a light in the building my father worked in and the guys fell off of the ladder and literally broke his back. He fell off the ladder because the floor underneath his ladder ended up breaking. The guy was an illegal and the building owner offered only 5000 dollars to him and a threat that he would call ins on the man if he even threatened to sue and the man had no health coverage. This is why it is so important that we should hire regular citizens to work and stop giving illegals jobs. The building owner got away easy from that and probably had so much stuff wrong with the place to begin with. Its just like these salons who hire these illegals to work for them. The owners of the salon just want to get off easy in case someone gets hurt while working for them and they can pay the illegals 5 bucks an hour. Then the salon owners want to complain about proper hiring practices and wages in nyc.

Anonymous said...

I avoided taking the Q16 bus while the Flushing Commons project was going up.
Did not Iike construction cranes looming over my head while waiting for the bus.
Went to the next stop instead.

Anonymous said...

They're just deplorables

Anonymous said...

...And the majority of the workers that die are the people that bastard trump wants to throw out...And the majority of the employers are of trump's party.

Typical con-servative hypocrisy.

JQ LLC said...

Speaking of expendable civilian casualties, there was the guy who got crushed by a falling 50 ft crane on worth st in Tribeca. I believe the incompetent contractor got a slap on the wrist. And another terrible irony, that slaughter happened nearby the DOB offices.

Anonymous said...

Undocumented, unexisting, brush it off.
Collateral damage for any developer.