Upcoming Dates:
Wildfire Smoke Hazards
Join us for a forum on the hazards of wildfire smoke for indoor and outdoor workers. We’ll cover:
- Risks and symptoms
- How to protect yourself
- Employer responsibilities
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
4:00pm – 6:00 pm
Presented by:
- Dr. Kenneth Spaeth, M.D. Division Chief and Medical Director, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Northwell Health, Assistant Professor, Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology and Prevention Zucker School of Medicine
About the Committee
The Health and Safety Committee meets on a regular basis to share information and strategies and to coordinate education and advocacy work on a range of issues. Committee participation is open to all affiliates. Our goal is to bring resources to bear on issues affecting member unions. To that end we organize educational workshops and conferences and convene subcommittees on specific issues or projects.
In the past several years we have:
- Hosted conferences on workers compensation issues that have combined nuts and bolts training with speakers from state agencies. With workers compensation benefits in transition, this has been a particularly timely project.
- Held class series on occupational health and safety topics—from legal rights issues to workplace violence, indoor air quality hazards and other issues.
- Organized committees around ergonomics issues – Safe Patient Handling in particular – indoor air quality and disaster response issues.
NYCOSH: 2024 Deadly Skyline Report
Construction worker deaths In New York City continue to rise even as death rates decline statewide. This spike is not happening in a vacuum: the NYC Department of Buildings is understaffed, OSHA inspections are well below pre-pandemic numbers, and workers often face dangerous conditions. Safety issues for migrant workers are particularly dire—more than one-quarter of all construction deaths are Latinx workers.
Construction continues to be one of the most dangerous industries in the country and workers risk their lives every day to build New York. In Deadly Skyline, the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) highlights fatality trends in New York’s construction industry and makes recommendations on how the state and city can make worksites safer for construction workers. This year’s Deadly Skyline report is based on 2022 data, the most recent data available by the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (DOL BLS).
MethodologyNYCOSH develops the Deadly Skyline report using data reported by: The Bureau of Labor Statistics; the New York City Department of Buildings; the New York State Department of Labor and the Workplace Fatalities Registry; the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); and numerous media reports. NYCOSH is grateful to all the workers who have joined us in various safety, health, and empowerment trainings over the past year, including new immigrants who have come to our offices for essential safety trainings. To all of New York’s construction workers who risk their lives every day on the job, we dedicate this report to you.