This represents a 61 percent increase in construction-related deaths compared to the same period the previous year. Seventeen of the 29 workers were killed in falls, compared to nine out of a total of 18 deaths in 2005.

The killings of workers are taking place in the midst of a construction boom here, as contractors, large and small, are pushing to meet deadlines and cut costs at the workers’ expense.

In 2005, $18.8 billion was spent on construction in New York City. The figure is expected to reach $20.8 billion in 2006, according to the New York Building Congress, a conglomerate of construction firms and related businesses. Much of the boom is directed toward building luxury condominiums and apartments sold at prices out of reach for most working people.

Falls from hanging scaffolds and high floors, as well as from scaffolding collapses, are a major source of the deaths.

Klever Jara, 25, originally from Ecuador, is one of the workers killed on the job recently. He fell from 18 stories high when he was walking along a building ledge connecting two scaffolds on November 1. According to press reports, Jara was wearing a harness at the time of the accident, but he had unclipped it to move between the two scaffolds.

Manno Oh, a bridge painter, fell to his death October 23 from the Queensboro Bridge when the scaffold he was on dipped as he was trying to fix it. Oh was not then wearing his harness, according to reports by CBS TV.

Another worker died the same day after a gust of wind knocked him off the scaffold as he was switching harnesses.

“They are killing us,” Peter Rivera, 20, who works at a construction site in the Chelsea area in Lower Manhattan, told the Militant in a December 12 interview. “They have a deadline and they are pushing us to finish the job so fast.”

The day after Jara’s death, city officials announced the formation of a 28-member panel “to develop a policy for safety enforcement, training, and oversight.”

Spokespeople for City Hall and builders’ associations have blamed the spike in deaths on the job on increased “illegal construction activity”; shortage of resources for safety enforcement agencies; and paltry penalties for violations.

According to Jonathan Bennett, public affairs director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, there are a total of eight city inspectors for scaffolding and fewer than three working under the federal Occupational and Safety Health Administration (OSHA).

“We don’t want this to become a union, nonunion question,” said Lou Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers’ Association, which represents employers of union workers. On National Public Radio’s Brian Lehrer show December 15, Coletti asserted, “What is necessary is a higher level of standards for smaller contractors.”

However, 81 percent of the deaths have occurred at nonunion construction sites.

“Inspectors came about a week ago, and we have not seen them since,” Stanley Strugala, 45, a scaffolding builder, said. Strugala has worked both in union and nonunion sites over 25 years. “They want to save themselves a few thousand dollars, and they hire inexperienced immigrant guys, and they take advantage of them,” he said, referring to the bosses. Most of the workers who died at construction sites last year were immigrants.

Strugala said building regulations require that the rigger holding the scaffold be checked every day prior to starting work, and that a monitor be available on site at all times. But, he added, “with the pressure to finish the job, you get rushed, and they want you in and out quick.”

Marco Chauca, a member of Drywall Tapers Union Local 1974, said many workers feel pressure to remove their harness temporarily because it gets in the way of doing the job fast. “There is always pressure to work faster,” said Chauca. “This is a production job, it is like factory work. If you don’t make the quota, they’ll fire you.”

At another site in Manhattan, George Deblasio, 18, member of Laborers Union Local 78, said the bosses “make safety adjustments for the pedestrians below. If you look up there, there’s a net, but you can tell it won’t do much if any of us fall.”

Luis Bello, who works at a construction site in Riverdale, Bronx, said competition for jobs and the bosses’ productivity drive are to blame for the deaths and injuries on the job. “The union would help if it pressed for better conditions,” he said.

“Over here there is a little more control because there is a union,” said Chauca. A union member for 12 years now, he used to work on nonunion demolition jobs as a day laborer earlier. “There you saw a lot of accidents,” he said.

Nadia Molina, director of the Workplace Project in Long Island, told National Public Radio that there is “a need among day laborers to unionize construction workers. When there is a union there is a greater degree of protection regardless of the workers’ immigration status.”
 
 
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