Committee on Education and Labor : U.S. House of Representatives

Press Releases

Weak Construction Safety Rules and Lax Enforcement Putting Workers at Risk, Witnesses tell House Labor Committee

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

 

WASHINGTON, DC -- Recent deadly construction accidents around the country show that the nation’s health and safety agencies need to do more to ensure safe working conditions for construction workers, witnesses told the House Education and Labor Committee today.

“There’s no question that construction is an inherently dangerous job,” said Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the committee. “The question is whether more can be done to prevent accidents and make the industry safer.”

In 2006, 1,239 construction workers were killed on the job.  While construction workers comprise only 8 percent of the total U.S. workforce, construction deaths account for more than 22 percent of all work-related deaths.

A recent spate of high profile construction and crane incidents, particularly in New York City and Las Vegas, has garnered significant media attention. According to a Las Vegas Sun investigation, 12 construction workers have been killed over the past 19 months in construction projects on the Strip. This is more deaths than during the entire 1990s construction boom in Las Vegas. In New York City, two massive construction crane collapses have killed nine people over the past few months, including one bystander.

“After 20 years of steady improvement in construction safety and health, we suddenly find ourselves in the midst of a safety and health crisis,” said Mark Ayers, president of the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO. “The outrageous number of fatalities in Las Vegas combined with crane incidents in New York and elsewhere has brought attention to the issue.”

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has not updated its crane and derrick safety standard since 1971. In 2004, labor and employer groups negotiated a draft standard to improve crane safety in order to reflect new technology and safety practices. More than four years later, even though all interested parties agreed to a new federal safety standard, federal OSHA has yet to turn that draft into an official proposal.

“Countless American cities and states depend upon these antiquated regulations because they have no localized crane oversight of their own,” said Robert LiMandri, New York City’s acting Housing Commissioner. “Because tower cranes are transitory, it is imperative a better federal standard is established. The nation cannot wait another moment until the outdated OSHA tower crane regulations are revised to meet the demands of modern construction.”

Witnesses also testified that even when health and safety agencies issue fines to employers for operating an unsafe workplace, often those sanctions are reduced or even eliminated weeks later.

George Cole lost his brother-in-law, Harold Billingsley, in a construction accident in 2007 after he fell 59 feet off a construction project in Las Vegas. Cole, a retired ironworker, testified that his brother-in-law’s death was preventable if health and safety rules were properly followed by the employer and enforced by Nevada OSHA.

Billingsley’s employer was initially fined for not following proper safety procedures. However, after an informal meeting with the employer regarding the citation, Nevada OSHA reduced the fine to zero.

“To add to our family’s overwhelming grief, OSHA withdrew all citations and fines,” said Cole. “The working men and women that build America look to OSHA to enforce the safety regulations for our protection.”

Cole also criticized federal OSHA for using an interpretation to weakening a standard that could have prevented his brother-in-law’s death.

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