U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat is pushing back against renewed efforts by insurers and developers to weaken New York’s Scaffold Law, arguing that the statute remains a critical safeguard for construction workers and public finances alike.
In a recently published Labor Perspective column in City & State New York, the Upper Manhattan congressman framed the latest opposition to Labor Law §240 as a misrepresentation of the real issue facing the construction industry. Espaillat wrote that “The Insurance Industry’s latest attack on New York’s Scaffold Law is framed as a plea for ‘affordability.’ In reality – it is a demand for legal immunity for those who profit from dangerous construction while shifting the human and financial cost of catastrophic injuries onto Workers and taxpayers.”
Espaillat emphasized that the law does not impose blanket or automatic liability, countering a common argument raised by critics. As he explained, “Labor Law §240 does not create automatic or no-fault liability. It applies only in a narrow category of cases involving gravity-related hazards where owners and contractors failed to provide proper safety devices and that failure directly caused the injury.” He added that “If a Worker is the sole cause of the accident, the defendant wins. That is not rhetoric. It is black-letter New York Appellate Law applied daily in Trial Courts across the State.”
The congressman also pointed to construction injury data to underscore why the statute remains necessary. According to city records cited in the column, New York experienced nearly 500 construction-related injuries in 2024, with falls from heights and falling objects continuing to be the leading causes of death and life-altering harm on job sites.
Espaillat argued that critics frequently ignore the historical context behind the law’s enactment. He noted that the statute was created after generations of construction workers were killed or permanently injured on unsafe scaffolds, often with responsibility shifted onto the workers themselves while safety protections were treated as optional. The law, he wrote, enforces a straightforward principle: “If you control the work site, you control the danger.”
He warned that replacing the Scaffold Law with a comparative negligence standard would not improve jobsite safety, but would instead undermine worker protections. Under such a system, Espaillat wrote, injured workers could see their compensation reduced based on subjective judgments about fault, even when basic safety measures were missing.
The economic consequences of such a shift, he argued, would not disappear but instead fall on the public. Costs associated with catastrophic injuries would be transferred to Medicaid, Social Security Disability, public housing programs, and taxpayer-funded home care, while developers avoid accountability for unsafe conditions.
Espaillat concluded that the debate over the Scaffold Law is not about affordability, but about responsibility—whether the burden of unsafe construction practices should remain with those who control worksites or be absorbed by injured workers and the public at large.
Originally reported by Labor News Story Link To City & State New York in Wny Labor Today.
