New York”™s longstanding and oft-debated Scaffold Law looks as if it will emerge unchanged from another state legislative session, despite the protests of a vocal contingent of the business community.
There is more than a month until the end of this year”™s session in mid-June, but it already seems the annual effort from businesses and industry lobbyists to repeal or amend are dead in the water.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo told Crain”™s New York Business the law wouldn”™t be changed in 2014. Cuomo, a Democrat running for re-election this year, told the newspaper he had a pro-business agenda but if one were to ask businesses to prioritize their problems, taxes would trump other reforms.
“Now they would say scaffold, but they would say, scaffold what? No. 8? No. 12,” Cuomo said, according to Crain”™s.
The state”™s Scaffold Law was put in place in 1885 to protect workers from unsafe conditions at work sites, when modern construction techniques meant taller buildings ”“ and in turn, increasing danger of high-altitude accidents. Opponents criticize the law, which they say increases the cost of any project due to a provision that holds construction companies and property owners 100 percent liable for “gravity-related” injuries at a work site.
John Ravitz, executive vice president of The Business Council of Westchester, said he is in favor of changing the liability standard. The law inflates the cost of any construction and causes insurance premiums to become increasingly unaffordable, he said. New York is the last state that has the absolute liability provision, Ravitz said, and the opposition shouldn”™t be viewed as being anti-safety.
“It”™s affecting so many different industries,” Ravitz said. “We”™re seeing the damage being done and it has nothing to do with protecting worker safety.”
Municipalities, school districts and taxpayers are being burdened by the law, he said, because of the inflated costs of construction and large injury settlements based on the absolute liability provision.
Ravitz said that by business council estimates, the law had inflated local government construction projects by $785 million. Out of the top 30 damage settlements in the state, about 25 of them were claims under the Scaffold Law, he said. Projections made available to the business council showed that the law could add anywhere between $200 million and $400 million to the ongoing construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge.
“For us here in the lower Hudson Valley, we want to make sure our legislators are focused on this,” he said.
After Cuomo”™s comments to Crain”™s, a number of state industry leaders and business organizations, including the business council, sent a letter Tuesday to the governor, reaffirming that the law is a priority for New York business leaders.
“We find it hard to conceive or accept that all these constituencies, interests and priorities that call for Scaffold Law reform are outweighed by the political influence of personal injury trial lawyers, and we are confident that working together we can achieve what would be a much-needed, long-overdue historic reform,” the letter said.
Gary La Barbera, president of the Building & Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, in  an op-ed in the New York Daily News said reform was needed ”“ but for the insurance industry. “Businesses involved in construction suffer from a Stockholm syndrome of sorts where they believe insurers holding them hostage with absurdly high premiums are their allies,” he wrote. “Instead of taking their fight to the insurers, these businesses have joined them in a campaign against the Scaffold Law which talks about everything but the fundamentals that drive insurance costs.”
The Scaffold Safety Coalition, a newly formed group of union members and supporters of the law, said changing the law would remove a burden on contractors and property owners to adequately provide safety measures for workers. The group said ballooning insurance rates are part of a nationwide trend, not a direct result of the law. It also disputes the notion that the Scaffold Law places liability on contractors or property owners when an employee is grossly negligent, such as if a worker were drunk.
