New York Disability Lawyer & Attorney : Turley, Redmond & Rosasco : Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, Nassau, Suffolk, Bronx, Staten Island

ABC News published an important article today highlighting the sharp rise in immigrant worker deaths on construction sites in the New York City area.  This problem, which I addressed in a prior post recently, is reaching epidemic proportions. 

As detailed in the article, just the other day a Ukrainian immigrant was decapitated after plunging 42 stories while working on a construction site on a Donald Trump Hotel in lower Manhattan.  Under the current New York Workers' Compensation law, the most his widow and children can collect for his death is $500 per week, plus payment of only $6000 toward his funeral bill. 

I told the reporter the story of one of my clients (an undocumented worker) who was severely injured last November when a brick wall fell on him while working on a construction site in Queens.  Despite multiple surgeries and being an inpatient at Jamaica Hospital for over a week, he still has not received his first workers' compensation check.  This is not unusual in cases where unscrupulous employers are paying immigrant workers "off-the-books" and not reporting their wages to the workers' compensation insurance company to save on premiums.  Workers' compensation lawyers like myself see sad cases like these every day.

Thanks to Susan Donaldson James  and ABC News for reporting on this growing tragedy.  Unfortunately, in the current political climate, it is questionable whether the federal government has any desire to address the safety of undocumented workers on construction sites??? 

Being a construction worker in New York City is becoming more deadly, according to new reports from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Amid a building boom in New York, construction worker accident related deaths are up 87% since 2005. 

As the NY Times reported earlier this year on construction deaths, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already taken some positive health and safety inspection measures to stem work related scaffold and ladder accidents in New York City.  However, it appears that part of the problem involves the intractable immigration crisis. 

Many shady construction general contractors and sub-contractors are hiring non-union undocumented workers who are not given adequate safety training or equipment.  As can be expected, the death toll is falling disproportionately on Latino construction workers.  This is because the percentage of Latin and Mexican construction workers are growing by leaps and bounds.  In addition, immigrants from India, Poland and other Eastern European countries are increasing on non-union (i.e., less safe) work sites. 

The workers' compensation lawyers at Turley, Redmond & Rosasco have unfortunately witnessed the impact of construction accident deaths on families first hand.  Hopefully, the issue of immigrant construction worker safety in NYC will be studied by the newly confirmed Chair of the NY Workers' Compensation Board, Zachary S Weiss.  As Governor Spitzer so correctly notes, we cannot stick our heads in the sand and pretend these immigrant workers do not exist.  These are real human beings who are dying almost every day, sometimes due to employer greed trying to avoid paying union wages.  Let us not build our gleaming New York City skyline on a foundation of blood.

Welcome to the newly designed New York Disability Law Blog!  As you will notice, I changed the official title of the blog from "The Disabled Worker Law Blog" to the  more informational "New York Disability Law Blog".  This is in keeping with the blog's purpose of providing useful information and insight regarding disability claims to fellow attorneys and the general public. 

To this end, I am excited to announce the creation of the blog's "Disability Law Library" which will be continually added to and updated.  I hope that this will eventually become the first place attorneys and claimant's turn to when researching disability claims and legal issues.  Still in it's formative stages, the library will have sections on long term disability and ERISA claims, Social Security  disability, New York workers' compensation, civil service disability pensions, scaffold /ladder /construction site lawsuits and a new section on the unfortunate expanding area of veterans' disability claims.

In addition, in 2007 we hope to do a better job collaborating with fellow bloggers such as Jonathan Ginsberg and his excellent Social Security Disability Radio Blog.  Please feel free to comment about the new design and let me know how the New York Disability Law Blog can better serve your needs.  Talk to you soon.

Workers on construction sites in New York are given special legal rights under New York Labor Law Sections 200, 240 and 240(1). These laws are sometimes referred to as the "Safe Place to Work Law" or the "Scaffold Law." These laws may allow construction workers to sue for pain and suffering in addition to collecting New York State Workers' Compensation Benefits. Depending upon the workers' injuries, these construction accident lawsuits could be worth multimillions of dollars for the worker and his family. Only a highly qualified disability trial attorney should handle construction accident lawsuits in New York City or Long Island. Call us toll free today at 1-877-NY-DB-LAW for your Free Case Evaluation by one of our attorneys.