Gov. Cuomo has proposed $2 billion in tax cuts aimed at improving our state’s business climate and he’s worked hard to reduce the red tape that so often impedes business growth in New York. He’s working to create a “New” New York, but there’s one law on the books that is a powerful symbol of what’s wrong with the “Old” New York: the 129-year-old Scaffold Law.
This unfair law makes the contractor and the property owner “absolutely liable” for any gravity-related injury on a construction job site, regardless of fault. Even if the construction company has provided all of the safety training and equipment that the law requires and the injury was caused by employee negligence, the contractor and property owner still bear 100 percent of the cost. The courts don’t even allow evidence to determine fault; a jury is convened only to determine the amount of the settlement.
Greedy trial lawyers are so shameless as to stand around construction jobs sites and hand out T-shirts and other materials with their contact info so that anyone who gets hurt immediately knows who to call — often times before they even call an ambulance.
The result? New York, the only state with such a law, is far and away the most expensive state in which to build a project —from a house, to a school or hospital, to the World Trade Center or a new Tappan Zee Bridge.
In the case of large public projects, the added insurance and settlement costs can run hundreds of millions of dollars. This means that hundreds of projects don’t get built each year, costing the state tens of thousands of solid middle-class construction jobs with good benefits, and our taxes continue to rise.
The Scaffold Law also stands in the way of the mayor’s and governor’s plans to to make pre-K available to every student. There simply aren’t enough seats to accommodate the tens of thousands of kids who’d be eligible under these proposals.
Already, thanks to the unfair Scaffold Law, the New York City School Construction Authority is paying $150 million more this year for insurance and settlement costs than it did last year — a 140 percent jump — and will pay $1 billion more over the next five years. If the law were changed, the authority could build more than 8,000 pre-K seats over the next five years, without needing any additional public funds.
What’s worse is that the School Construction Authority has the most successful mentor and Minority and Women Business Enterprise program in the nation — awarding over $1.7 billion in construction contracts to more than 800 M/WBE companies over the last decade. If we don’t reform the Scaffold Law now, this program and the thousands of M/WBE firms and jobs it creates are at risk.
Rich trial lawyers have fought any Scaffold Law reforms for decades. They don’t want the gravy train to end. They make hundreds of millions off these lawsuits, most of which never see a court of law.
No one is suggesting that injured workers shouldn’t have the opportunity to seek payment or file suit; reform would preserve the worker’s right to sue. But there should be a standard of comparative negligence (like there is in every other state) that would allow a judge or jury to determine how much fault each party has.
Trial lawyers say that changing the law would make job sites unsafe. That’s not true. It hasn’t made sites in any other state less safe and the statistics prove it.
Further, the law as written treats good, responsible contractors and owners — the ones who provide safety equipment and training — the same is it does the bad actors who don’t. If anything, this law in New York makes our workers less safe.
They’ll also tell you that the only ones at fault are greedy insurance companies who are making millions of dollars. In fact, many insurers are no longer willing to write policies for construction jobs in New York. If they were making big profits, there’d be a line of insurance companies trying to get into the New York market — yet the reality is more of a line to get out.
The governor, our new mayor and the Legislature have the opportunity to reform this law in a meaningful way. Doing so would create thousands of jobs, provide a sense of fairness and make workers in New York safer. It’s simple — this is about jobs, safety and justice. The time to act is now. Join us at amwcb.com
The Rev. Jacques DeGraff is Co-Chairman of the Alliance for Minority and Women Construction Businesses and Senior Vice President of 100 Black Men.