More Working at Height Problems NYC

NYC Construction Worker Killed in Fall 54 minutes ago.
NEW YORK (AP) — Authorities say a construction worker has died in a nine-story fall at a building under construction on Manhattan's East Side. New York City Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster says it appears the worker's nylon safety strap failed while he was installing windows on Monday. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer says a preliminary investigation by his office shows a record of about 36 violations at the construction site. The accident occurred about two blocks from the building where a window washer died in a 47 story fall in December.

This follows on from another story recently with the headlines that workers pay price of NYC boom. New Yorkers who live next to construction sites – and there are thousands of active sites in the city – have been a little uneasy lately. A few weeks ago, a crane 60 metres long tipped over, crushing a nearby building and killing seven people. Four of them were construction workers. Three of them were just hanging out on a Saturday afternoon. And it was not an isolated incident. There has been a string of highrise construction accidents in recent months, including two window washers who plunged more than 40 floors to what should have been certain death. Miraculously, one survived. The fact is, on average one construction worker dies a week in New York City - and for every one killed many more are injured. Latinos make up the largest, and fastest growing, group of victims, like "Juan", 35, who fell and split his head open on the job three years ago. Juan had been thrilled to make as much as $130 a day at building sites, enough to take care of himself and his wife and four children back in Mexico. He could make more money and work fewer hours in construction than he did washing dishes. Then he fell through a hole in the floor, landing on his back in the cement basement. He lost a lot of blood and was unconscious in the hospital for a week. Most construction fatalities are the result of falls. Of the 43 incidents that took place in New York in 2006, almost half of them involved Latinos, according to the Department of Labour Statistics.

Undocumented workers are easy to find. Every morning they group along 69th street in Queens, at a community centre on Staten Island, and in many other New York neighbourhoods where recent immigrants live. Contractors in vans or pick-up trucks drive up looking for cheap labour. Typically, the workers swarm and there is a brief period of negotiation, then a few men jump in and are whisked off to job sites. They have been in high demand. Spending on construction climbed seven per cent in 2007 to $26.2 billion, according to the New York Building Congress, a trade organisation. According to New York Construction Workers United, about 64 per cent of the city's 250,000 construction workers are immigrants who do the vast majority of non-union work. Basic security equipment like harnesses and – in Juan's case - hard hats are often lacking from job sites. Those who do receive safety equipment are often forced to pay for it themselves. Many are afraid to complain because they do not want to be blacklisted or risk being deported if they are illegal.
The crane accident has prompted municipalities from cities such as Philadelphia to Dallas to review the regulations governing construction sites – and many have found them lacking. And one thing is clear after the March crane accident that killed seven people - dangerous construction sites can put the entire public at risk.