New York City is currently experiencing a building boom. As a recent article in the New York Post reported, the building department reportedly issued 168,243 construction permits last year, more than any other year in New York history.
This increase in construction projects is welcome news to the 45,242 construction workers in the city who may be looking for work. However, with this sudden increase in building, care must be taken to ensure that those same construction workers are properly trained and that all safety precautions are followed.
More work permits could mean more accidents
With the great increase in construction projects this year comes an equally great increase in workplace accidents. In the first seven months of this year, there were 457 construction accidents in New York City. 469 people were injured. That is roughly 2.5 people injured on construction sites every single day from January 1st-July 31st. Of those injured, eight were fatally wounded. Many of these injuries involved objects falling on employees or construction workers falling due to improper use of safety equipment.
To counteract this increase of injuries, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently approved a safety requirement mandating that construction workers complete more training hours to continue working in their field.
Ben Kallos, a City Councilman on the Upper East Side, sponsored this legislation. "Every life, injury and accident in construction is finally being counted, because they matter," he said, "We can and must do better as a city to ensure proper training, on the job experience, coupled with the right to say no to danger."
What to do after a construction accident
The dedicated legal team at Pasternack, Tilker, Ziegler, Walsh, Stanton & Romano strongly agrees with Councilman Kallos. We are New York workers' compensation attorneys who have seen the devastating consequences of subpar safety practices at a worksite. Construction is not the only dangerous field of employment, but it is one of the most severe when it comes to injuries.
If you or a loved one has been injured in a construction accident, you may be eligible for workers' compensation benefits. Contact us today. We will fight to get your life back on track.