Dive Brief:
- Trade unions are at odds with New York City's Department of Buildings over how the agency tracks construction deaths, according to Crain's New York Business.
- Of the 17 construction-related deaths the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration recorded in New York last year, the DOB logged six — the only deaths, they said, that were associated with some violation of the city's building codes. Whether or not OSHA cited contractors in relation to the deaths had no bearing on the DOB's decision to officially count the death.
- Fourteen of the 15 cases resulting in serious violations from OSHA were nonunion, leading Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, to tell Crain's that union workers "feel more free to walk away from dangerous conditions." Nonunion groups have said the reason for the uptick in nonunion jobsite deaths is not safety-related but is a result of the increased nonunion share of work in the city.
Dive Insight:
If a construction death is not recorded by the DOB, then there is a greater chance, according to Crain's, that there will be no city investigation, despite the fact that the DOB joined with the Manhattan District Attorney's office last year to form the Construction Task Force.
Despite this recent dispute, New York City has responded to the rise in local construction activity with increased enforcement. Last month, Politico reported that the DOB issued 23% more stop-work orders between January and June of this year than it did did in the same 2015 period. The DOB also issued almost three times more stop-work orders than it did new construction permits from 2012 to 2016.
Buildings commissioner Rick Chandler told Politico that the agency has increased staffing and penalties in an effort to curb unsafe work practices, but critics, including the same trade unions that are demanding the DOB provide a full count of construction worker deaths, called the DOB's choice of which projects to shut down "arbitrary." The DOB reported late last year that Manhattan's construction-related fatalities, which have increased along with the city's construction boom, almost doubled between June 2014 and June 2015, jumping from six to 11.
According to an April Wall Street Journal report, unions are starting to lose their grip on private markets in typically union-centric markets, such as New York. Major companies in the city like Tishman Construction and Turner Construction have passed on renewing certain collective bargaining union labor agreements for private work, indicating they’re planning to use less expensive nonunion workers on future projects. Part of the unions' justification for higher wages is that their workers provide a higher quality and safer product than their nonunion counterparts. However, proponents of the merit shop philosophy contest that claim and say nonunion job sites are just as safe.
