By Josh Eidelson:“We’d be picking workers up off the street”: Andrew Cuomo’s next liberal reckoning

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/29/we%E2%80%99d_be_picking_workers_up_off_the_street_andrew_cuomos_next_liberal_reckoning/

If the potential president does business' bidding on a new scaffolding bill, workers will die, an advocate warns

By Josh Eidelson Tuesday, Oct 29, 2013 07:30 AM CST


Andrew Cuomo (Credit: AP/Mike Groll)


Industry groups hope New York Governor Andrew Cuomo – a presumed presidential aspirant who’s frequently defied liberals on economics – will back their push to “reform” the country’s toughest law holding contractors responsible when workplace falls end in injury or death.

“I think we’d be picking workers up off the street,” if the state’s “scaffold law” is gutted, said Joel Shufro, who directs the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. “Because I think employers would cut corners in ways that would result in workers being injured or killed.” Cuomo’s office did not respond to inquiries.

In an October 16 letter, dozens of business groups and the New York Conference of Mayors urged Cuomo to reform the stat’s “scaffold law,” a move they said would “help alleviate fiscal stress by saving taxpayer dollars, creating jobs, and increasing revenue to the state and localities.” Signatories included the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, whose director Tom Stebbins told Salon that the group has made the issue a priority because “insurance rates put people of business, they take jobs away, and as we’re finding out more and more, it’s costing us more and more in our public projects.”

The 128 year-old “scaffold law” allows contractors to be held liable for “gravity-related” injuries suffered by their employees when management failed to comply with a safety rule, even (with certain exceptions) if the employee was also at fault. Stebbins contended there was “no data that supports” the claim that it improves safety, and argued that what he called the law’s “absolute liability” standard means “you’re assigned fault without negligence,” and actually “makes job sites less safe.”

FULL story at link.

[Omaha Steve]

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