Vol. 73/No. 35      September 14, 2009

Construction worker Henryk Siebor, 42, fell four stories to his death August 18 when he stepped on scaffolding and it gave way, leaving two other workers suspended from their safety harnesses. The men were left dangling for 15 minutes before they were rescued by firefighters.

The workers were repairing the façade on an upscale Brooklyn apartment building when a motor that lowered and raised the scaffold stopped working. The two men then asked Siebor to check it out. As Siebor stepped across from his scaffolding to theirs the cable snapped, dropping the platform from beneath the three men.

“It was so fast, I did not have time to think,” Marlo Sidinta, one of the three workers, told the New York Times. “Then I realized I was hanging, so I felt calmer. But then I looked down and saw my co-worker on the ground.” Siebor was wearing his harness but investigators are not sure if it was secured to the building, reported the Times.

William Barnes, 48, was killed August 25 when a hydraulic boom snapped off a crane he was operating and crashed on his head. Barnes worked on the Throgs Neck Bridge.

Three days later Stephen Laviscount, 27, was killed at the Boerum Hill building in Brooklyn when an elevator he was working under fell five floors on top of him.

“Accidents do happen. There is pressure to get the job done. I hear it every day,” José Martínez, a six-year veteran of the Carpenters union, told the Militant at a worksite in mid-Manhattan.

“We need more safety and more safety inspectors. The union construction sites are safer than the nonunion, said George Escuza, a member of Laborers Local 79 who is originally from Peru.

“If I feel a job is dangerous,” said Martínez, “I tell the boss ‘show me.’ If he can’t show me, I won’t do the job. At a nonunion place, there would be no choice.”

Dan Fein contributed to this article.  
 
 
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