An inconvenient irony for progressive, pro-labor Bill de Blasio: One of the biggest threats to the mayor’s ambitious affordable housing and Sandy rebuilding plans is a union-beloved law.
If de Blasio is serious about getting optimal construction bang for the buck, he’ll get on board the bandwagon to reform the Scaffold Law.
Passed in 1885, the statute holds building owners and developers 100% liable for height-related injuries even if they were only 1% at fault.
Meaning: A construction worker can disregard safety precautions, and even be drunk on the job, and still sue for full damages if he gets injured.
This imposes what amounts to a major tax on every school, bridge, subway tunnel, office tower and apartment building from the Bronx to Buffalo — by inflating construction insurance costs to levels unheard of in other states .
The School Construction Authority’s liability tab soared by $ 140 million in the last year alone. At the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, liability costs rose from 3% of construction spending a decade ago to as high as 7% today.
If applied to the 200,000 affordable housing units de Blasio aims to build, four percentage points would equate to 8,000 more apartments for working families.
If applied to the 20,000 Sandy-damaged homes waiting for promised city assistance, four points equates to 800 more families getting shelter.
Little wonder that a broad coalition is rallying for reform that would divvy up damages based on each party’s share of blame — the same fair system used for every other personal-injury suit.
Among those pleading for change are Sandy relief organizations. As four of them wrote in an April 22 letter to lawmakers: “Make no mistake — the Scaffold Law has directly and significantly hindered our ability to help hundreds of New Yorkers return home.”
One signatory was the St. Bernard Project, founded in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, which reports that insurance costs suck up six times more of its hard-won donations in New York than in other states where it operates. Yikes.
Unions are right that construction work can be terribly dangerous. They’re wrong that the Scaffold Law, as written, is critical to hardhat safety.
To the contrary, a recent study out of the University of Albany’s Rockefeller Institute found that construction deaths and injuries actually declined after Illinois repealed a similar law in 1995 — and it now boasts a better safety record than New York.
Stymieing reform thus far: the trial lawyers’ stranglehold on the Legislature — especially the Assembly, where Speaker Sheldon Silver makes six figures moonlighting for the personal-injury firm Weitz & Luxenberg.
“You can’t change it,” Gov. Cuomo said to Crain’s New York Business regarding the Scaffold Law. “The trial lawyers are the single most powerful political force in Albany.”
But de Blasio — for the sake of his own agenda — cannot afford to shrug this one off. If he wants to be Bill the Builder, the Scaffold Law is one monstrosity he must tear down.
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