Accident News Headlines

Bronx Construction Safety Program

A newly-signed partnership among local labor unions, employer groups, and state and federal agencies will promote job safety and health for more than 100 workers on the Hunts Point Water Pollution Control Project in the Bronx, which is expected to be completed in June 2007. Objectives include zero fatalities during the project. The partnership involves the Tarrytown area office of the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); Yonkers Contracting Company, Inc.; the Building Trades Employers Association; the Building and Construction Trades Council; the General Contractors Association of Greater New York; and the On-Site Consultation Program of the New York State Department of Labor's Division of Safety and Health.

"The strength of this partnership is the joint effort by business, labor and government to minimize worker hazards and to encourage improvement on existing safety and health efforts throughout the life of this major project," said Diana Cortez, OSHA's Tarrytown area director.As general contractor on the project, Yonkers Contracting will oversee 20 subcontractors. The partnership will encourage participating subcontractors to improve their safety and health performance and employee safety and health training. It will recognize subcontractors with exemplary safety and health programs, and it will provide strategies to eliminate primary construction hazards: electrocutions, caught-in and struck-by incidents, and falls.

Other partnership objectives include reducing hazardous conditions through training, hazard identification and correction; zero exposure to falls from unprotected sides and edges; and assisting contractors' participation in OSHA's voluntary protection programs. Signing the partnership were OSHA regional administrator Patricia K. Clark; Diana Cortez, OSHA's Tarrytown area director; James Rush, program manager, NY Department of Labor's Onsite Consultation Program; Thomas R. Smith, safety director, Yonkers Construction Co; Lou Coletti, chairman and CEO, Building Trades Employers Association; Edward J. Malloy, chairman and CEO, Building and Construction Trades Council; and Francis X. McArdle, general manager, General Contractors Association of New York, Inc.