Deutsche Bank and 15-Day Fire Inspection Cycle (Wiltermuth) Pitch

The towers came down on September 11, 2001, and promises were made. The nearby Deutsche Bank building stands as a marker from that day. Six and a half years later, in the midst of a massive construction boom, has high-rise safety been improved? What has stayed the same? A fire at the building in August killed two firefighters, exposing unsafe work conditions and a failed 15-day fire inspection cycle. The District Attorney launched an ongoing criminal investigation against the city, as well as against the subcontractor in charge of deconstruction. This story will focus on the 15-day fire inspection cycle. When was it first implemented? Did they know at the time that it was unfeasible?

Scaffold Questions (Steagall)

Worker Safety / Scaffold

My questions will vary depending on who I'm interviewing, worker vs. administrator vs. legislator. Here are a couple, probably in a more formal style, but the same gist. In light of your (Professor Barry's) post regarding keeping questions on track, these questions don't live up to that. In fact, this topic might not be appropriate. Let me know if that's the case Professor Barry

Are you aware / in favor of the proposed changes to the Section 201 of the Labor Law, known as the Scaffold Law?

Have you received training on scaffold safety? What did it consist of?

Have you provided training on scaffold safety? What did it consist of?

Has you taken extra precautions in light of the recent deaths of construction workers?

Do you feel that the use of illegal immigrant workers is a detriment to worker safety, both their's and their co-workers?

Site to check out

I came across a site that might be helpful background info for a lot of people, The Safety Library

The site has information on:
Disasters (disaster safety, emergency management, terrorism)
Hazards and controls (biological safety, chemical safety, environmental safety, fire safety, physical hazards, etc.)
Industry Safety
Laws and Regulations
Safety Management

In addition to compiling research, the site also has a great number of links updated constantly on the issues listed above and others (the list is pretty long, but I selected the most relevant ones for the list above).

Two Reports:Employment Practices in Construction Industry

Two solid reports from 2007 relating to employment practices in the NYC construction industry:

1. Tearing Down Job Quality (Fiscal Policy Institute)

http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/publications2007/FPI_BuildingUpNY_TearingDownJobQuality.pdf

2. Unregulated Work in the Construction Industry (NYU Law School Brennan Center)

http://www.brennancenter.org/page/-/d/download_file_49377.pdf

“Despite the dangerous working conditions, workers in the underground economy are paid very low wages, are denied the protections of universal social insurance programs (workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, disability), do not have health coverage or retirement benefits, are not able to join a union, and rarely are they entitled to paid sick leave, holidays or vacations. Working in the underground construction economy is like working in the 19th century when it comes to labor rights, protections and employment standards.”

“New York City and New York State should require prevailing wage for all affordable housing contracts and for any construction project benefiting from city and state government funding, subsidy or zoning or other land use action. Taxpayers get better value with prevailing wage. It is an effective anti-poverty program, and an obvious way to address New York’s widening income gap between the rich and the poor.”

A Tale of Three Articles

This is for those of you who wanted to see the evolution of my WSN piece from crappy article to crappier article.

To be publicly embarrassed by teenagers is to feel alive.

Scaffolding in the City: 2/14 Memo

The following is the research I've done so far on scaffolding in the city, a subsection that falls under both topics i've chosen; workers and construction.

I've included a section from Andrew's post. My aim is not to be redundant, but to condense the information we do have into a more inclusive, comprehensive text.

So, scaffolding in the city:

2006 -- The Building's Department, OSHA and the Office of Immigrant Affairs convene a Scaffold Worker Safety Task Foce. They found that "speaking English as a second language or speaking a language different than that spoken at the job site was often a factor in fatal construction accidents."
Steps Taken: "Outreach events across the five boroughs to distribute safety information in multiple languages to day laborers and discussed with workers how to stay safe on the job"
Questions: How effective can this outreach program really be? how are day laborers, if they're picked up at a Home Depot to do a day's work, going to access this "safety information" and even if they do get access to it, how does it help them as, possibly, exploited labor?
Tasks at Hand: Get a copy of this "safety information," talk to laborers on job sites to see if they are aware of the safety information, etc.
Contacts: Department of Buildings, Carly Sullivan Jr., day laborers (I speak Spanish and can most likely take care of this. There are several spots that I know where day laborers get hired)

Some Statistics:
from Andrew's posted emails "construction incidents on high-rise construction sites, which comprise union and non-union labor sites, increased 49% over the last year, from 69 in CY 2006 to 103 in CY 2007." DOUBLE CHECK STATISTIC. Just glancing at it, her percentage is wrong, so who knows how correct the rest of the information is.

2006 Census US Department of Labor: 5,703 workplace accident fatalities in 2006, 14% of which were falls. 11% of 809 fatal falls in 2006 (nationwide) occurred from scaffolding.

7 of 25 workers killed in workplace accidents in New York City construction sites between Oct 2001 and Sept 2003 were day laborers (get more up to date stats)
NEW YORK SCAFFOLD LAW:
Section 240 of the Labor Law, it requires contractors and property owners to build or furnish whatever equipment is necessary (for example, scaffolding) to keep workers safe from on-the-job falls. It allows for legal action against the owners of the building, and the contractor. Over the course of the last two decades there have been attempts to repeal this legislation (NY is the only state to have something of its type), and this debate is ongoing. Governor Spitzer has stated his intention to address the issue. There are differing interpretations. Pro-business types, and personal injury attorneys eager to get cases, try to label it as the right to sue even if the fall results from personal negligence on the part of the worker, and that insurance premiums go way up on account of this "outdated" law. Pro-worker types are quick to point out that it is essential protection for workers. The former is seemingly debunked right here.


Accountability of Contractors: taken from Andrew's posted email
"For recent example, you can look at the permits issued for the new building under construction at 525 Clinton Street, the site in Brooklyn where the scaffold worker died last week. A general contractor called Clinton Court Development LLC pulled the permits issued for that job site. When we search our data as it relates to Clinton Court Development LLC, we find only violations and permits issued related to work at 525 Clinton Avenue. It is possible the owners of Clinton Court Development LLC also own corporations that are building developments in other parts of the borough or the city, but there is no way to know for sure. With the infrastructure we have in place today, we cannot holistically track contractors’ performance across job sites and hold them accountable, unless the general contractor retains the same name across job sites.
As the Commissioner said in response to a question at the hearing, it is surprising that in this day and age, of the 29 trades licensed by the Buildings Department, general contractors are not one of them. Requiring a general contractor to register would empower the Buildings Department with a tool to track a contractor’s performance across job sites and hold him accountable for his actions."

Question: Is it possible to track this contractor by the equipment they use, such as the scaffolding they rent? If we could trace them back to previous job sites and look at the incidents that occurred at said sites it could reveal some good stuff.

Follow-Up: I live near Clinton Hill and I'll be taking pictures of the job site as well as asking some questions, maybe looking for serial numbers on the scaffolding equipment as well as the company that rented it to them (usually displayed somewhere on the scaffolding).

Questions on the Topic as a Whole: How will the debate on the scaffold law evolve? how serious is the Department of Buildings about passing an accountability scheme for contractors (is it just lip service)? Get into specifics of the code and see how strictly those specifics are enforced at different job sites. On buildings such as Deutsch Bank, where the work is done at significant elevation and there is no quick form of egress or ingress, how is the scaffolding situation made to account for the condition?

Clearly this is a very preliminary sketch, but we can move forward on the scaffold issue from here, or I can spearhead this since it is only one subsection of the worker / construction issue.

Daily Eagle

Two recent, interesting articles from the Broolyn Daily Eagle:

safety legislation:

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=18200

and toxic legacies , Brooklyn-style:

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=18300