Backtrack in Scaffold Law debate
Casey Seiler
Albany
In a dispute that places academic researchers in uncomfortable proximity to some of New York's loudest political advocates, SUNY's Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government is backing away from part of a recent report it issued on the state's controversial Scaffold Law.
The 129-year-old law places "absolute liability" on employers whenever a worker suffers a gravity-related injury. Labor unions that support it have blasted the institute's study, especially its conclusion that in comparison to New York the average number of non-fatal construction injuries in Illinois dropped after the state repealed its version of the Scaffold Law in 1995.
Critics of the report have angrily noted that it was paid for with $82,800 from the New York Civil Justice Institute, the research arm of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, a business-backed group that wants to see the Scaffold Law amended.
Citing the often stratospheric cost of insurance for large building projects, the state's construction industry would like to see the absolute liability standard swapped for the more common measure of "comparative negligence," in which workers would bear a proportional responsibility for their injury if, for example, they showed up to work inebriated or otherwise violated safety standards.
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Backtrack-in-Scaffold-Law-debate-5443526.php
