Construction Accidents Information Center

Construction workers must deal with some of the most dangerous working conditions faced by employees in any industry, and serious work-related injuries at construction sites occur with unfortunate frequency.

In the United States, approximately one million workers have been killed on-the-job since the 1920's. Our country’s prior industrial history is even more egregious. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated annual workplace fatalities at 30,039 in the early 1920’s. 75,000 railroad workers died in the quarter century before World War I alone. The construction industry was just as dangerous, if not more so. The International Association of Bridge and Structural Steel Workers (Iron Workers), for example, lost a full one percent of its membership to workplace accidents in fiscal year 1911-12. A leading skyscraper construction firm admitted at the end of the 1920’s that one worker died for every 33 hours of employed time during the previous decade. The United States led the world in casualty rates. Coal worker fatality rates were triple those in the United Kingdom, to cite one example 6

Shamefully high fatality and injury rates continued beyond the early twentieth century. Into the 1990’s, the Iron Workers continued to report losing about 100 members a year to workplace accidents. 7 Responding to National Safety Council statistics suggesting that 14,000 Americans are killed and 2.5 million permanently injured in the workplace every year 8, the United States Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 “to assure so far as possible every working man and woman in the Nation safe and healthful working conditions and to preserve our human resources.” At the time of OSHA’s passage, the country was losing more men and women to workplace accidents than to the war in Vietnam 9 Today, according to OSHA’s own numbers, 6,000 American workers per year die from workplace accidents, 6 million American workers per year suffer injuries due to such accidents, and 50,000 American workers per year die from illnesses related to occupational hazards.

Death and disability due to unsafe or unhealthy workplaces remain America's hidden epidemic. In 1994, there were 6.8 million job-related injuries and illnesses in the private sector alone, an average of more than 18,000 injuries and/or illnesses each and every day of the year. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Annual Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, 1994. The cost of these injuries and illnesses has been estimated at $120 billion for 1994 alone. National Safety Council, Accident Facts, (1995 Edition). Researchers at Mt. Sinai Medical School have estimated that 50,000 to 70,000 workers die each year as a result of major occupationally acquired diseases like cancer, lung disease and coronary heart disease. Landrigan PJ, Baker DB, “The recognition and control of occupational disease,” Journal of the American Medical Association 1991;266:676-80. In 1998, the number of confirmed deaths due to occupational injuries in the U.S. was 6,026, approximately one-tenth the estimated number of deaths due to occupational illnesses. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries,” 1998, U.S. Department of Labor, August 4, 1999.

The aforementioned statistics show that work in the American capitalist-industrial complex has been, and continues to be, extraordinarily risky. Wages and statutory workers compensation systems are ways of compensation for, and limitation of, the hazardous nature of certain types of labor. The passage of OSHA served as just one acknowledgement that these systems are inherently incapable of achieving these purposes.

It is clear that workers are not sufficiently compensated by their wages for the dangers they face. Economic theory suggests that employers will compensate workers for risks incumbent to the work by increasing wages; this increase is called a wage premium.11 Wage premiums serve as the first line of defense against the marginalization of worker accident and illness related costs as externalities. An externality is a cost of doing business for which the given comp any does not pay or does not pay fully. When companies are not paying all the costs of doing business, more of the product is sold than should be because price does not reflect cost. The market becomes, in a word, inefficient. More importantly, there is no economic incentive for employers to spend money to make work safer while hazard-related costs remain externalities. Companies therefore profit from unsafe work environments.

Ronald Coase famously determined that the market could internalize, as it were, health hazards of employment through wage negotiations. That is, workers theoretically would not undertake risky work without compensation for the risk. They would bargain with employers for an incremental increase in wages proportional to the degree of risk to pre-pay, in a sense, for the chance of being harmed. Employers would be forced to weigh the cost of paying workers to compensate for the risk against the cost of making the work less risky by introducing new technology or introducing other costly safety measures. This system of ex ante compensation can only work if people are fully informed of and fully comprehend the risks they face. 1 2 And, there must be equal bargaining power among all parties and a generally competitive labor market.1 3

Clearly these market conditions rarely, if ever, all coexist. It is notoriously common for people to underestimate intangible hazards, and there is broad consensus that existing information about the number of work-related deaths and injuries understates the extent of the problem. 1 4 And, the concept of a perfectly equal playing field for wage negotiations is practically non-existent in reality, particularly for non-union workers. Indeed, studies have found a negative correlation between risk and pay for non-union workers. 1 5 Such statistics point to the obvious reality that disadvantaged workers, who have few other options and therefore possess the least bargaining power for wages, are those who most frequently take on the most hazardous work.

Statutory workers’ compensation systems would not need to exist if wage premiums sufficiently compensated workers for the risks of work and deterred employers from keeping working conditions hazardous. Indeed, the implementation of workers’ compensation regimes by state legislatures in the late nineteenth century served as a public acknowledgement of the stark inadequacy of ex ante risk compensation. 1 6 Industrial injuries and fatalities remained alarmingly high; insufficient incentives existed for employers to make work safe. Calabresi and Melamed reasoned that if Coasian bargains cannot be achieved due to market and human psychological imperfections then tort law and/or government regulation can operate to correct market inefficiencies related to risk. 1 7 That is, in workers’ compensation regimes, employers are forced to weigh the cost of paying workers’ compensation against the cost of eliminating or lessening the hazardous nature of the work.

Unfortunately, it is readily apparent that workers’ compensation fails to effectively compensate workers for risk or to make work safer. States invariably cap workers’ compensation for on-the-job accidents. 1 8 Furthermore, occupational illnesses are notoriously under-compensated; one study shows that only 250 cancer cases a y ear are compensated, when thousands of cancer fatalities could be rooted in occupational hazards. 1 9 Workers frequently fail to make, and then establish in court, causation with regard to work-related illnesses.2 0 Furthermore, workers’ compensation regimes have never been posited as a means for workers to recoup full damages; rather, they are justified as ways to keep workers from suffering dramatically as a result of their injuries. 2 1 Because employers are not forced to pay for the consequences of the hazards the employment presents, the market remains inefficient. And, there is not enough economic incentive for employers to make work less hazardous.

As aforementioned, OSHA was implemented with these systematic inadequacies, as well as our country’s bloody industrial history, in mind. OSHA was enacted to provide prevention; however, as discussed earlier, a high incidence of occupational injury and illness persist. Tort law, operating outside of the workers’ compensation regime, can contribute to both prevention of and compensation for hazards by forcing those responsible for risk to pay fully for the human consequences of it. The imposition of liability through tort law is meant to discourage conduct which is harmful to society, foster reasonable conduct and create incentives to minimize risks of harm. Hopkins v. Fox & Lazo Realtors, 132 N.J. 426, 448 (1993); People Express Airlines, Inc. v. Consolidated Rail Corporation, 100 N.J. 246, 266 (1985); Weinberg v. Dinger, 106 N.J. 469, 494 (1987); see also Prosser and Keeton on Torts § 4 (5th Ed.1984) (noting that "prophylactic" factor of preventing future harm is a primary consideration in tort law). Tort law provides the bite to work in conjunction with OSHA’s bark. It provides real economic incentive for firms to invest in safety for their workers, rather than turn a profit on their potential for injury. As such, in creating the OSHA law, Congress recognized that it is the general contractor on a job site who has the most power and position to enforce workplace safety laws. As such, OSHA and courts throughout the United States recognize the general contractor as the single repository for safety on the job site. If they are not charged with this duty, this enforcement will never happen.

Under well-settled construction law in New Jersey, the general contractor on a work site has a non-delegable duty to maintain a safe workplace that includes “ensur ‘prospective and continuing compliance’ with the legislatively imposed non-delegable obligation to all employees on the job site, without regard to contractual or employer obligations.” Alloway v. Bradlees Inc., 157 N.J. 221, 237-38 (1999), citing, Kane v. Hartz Mountain, 278 N.J.Super. 129, 142-43 (App. Div. 1994). State public policy and OSHA impose a duty on the general contractor to ensure the protection of all of the workers on a construction project, irrespective of the identity and status of their various and several employers, by requiring, either by agreement or by operation of law, the designation of a single repository of the responsibility for the safety of them all. Alloway, 157 N.J. at 238, citing Bortz v. Rammel, 151 N.J.Super. 312, 321 (App. Div. 1977), cert. den. 75 N.J. 539. As a matter of public policy and federal law, the general contractor is the single repository of responsibility for the safety of all employees on the job. As such the general contractor bears responsibility for all OSHA violations on the jobsite. Meder v. Resorts International, 240 N.J.Super. 470, 473-77 (App. Div. 1989), cert. den. 121 N.J. 608; Kanes24, 278 N.J.Super. at 142-43; Dawson v. Bunker Hill Plaza Assocs., 289 N.J.Super. 309, 320-21 (App.Div.1996). 2 2 Originally in Meder, and restated in such cases as Dawson, New Jersey courts have held that “violation of the obligations imposed by the federal regulations supports a tort claim under state law.” Meder at 477, 573 at A.2d 922. Dawson, 673 A.2d 847, 852.

General contractors are responsible for the overall management of the construction project. They plan out what work has to be done. They prepare specifications for work to be completed so that subcontractors can bid on that work. They are in charge of reviewing those bids and selecting the contractors. General contractors coordinate the work of the subcontractors so they don’t “get in the way” of each other. As such they are involved in scheduling and problem solving. They also inspect the work to determine whether payment by the owner is warranted. The role of the general contractor is just that--general. Typically they do not get involved in the manner and means of completing the job; that is left up to the various subcontractors specifically hired for that purpose. See, for example, Meder, 240 N.J.Super. 470 (“Resorts concedes that it hired the various contractors on the job and assumed the responsibility of coordinating their work, but asserts that it did not attempt to direct or control the manner in which they performed their contracts”). Indeed, as indicated in Meder, at a bare minimum, general contractors are characterized by their hiring of subcontractors and coordinating their work. Given their power and control over the job, and their ability to hire and fire sub contractors who work at their pleasure, they are charged with the top down responsibility to enforce the OSHA construction site safety regulations.

A construction site accident can be catastrophic and lead to permanent injury or death. If you or a loved one has suffered in a construction site accident, you want to take the legal steps to ensure your just recovery. You need a personal injury or accident law firm that is well versed in the OSHA regulations and the every day realities of a construction job site that results in injuries to workers. Whether you need assistance with workers' compensation or you need a skilled personal injury attorney to pursue your claims, Keefe Bartels & Clark LLC is a firm that can assist you. We are experienced in handling complex construction claims related to scaffolding accidents, defective products, electrocution, and other construction site accidents. Contact us today for a free consultation or to speak to an experienced attorney.

Construction Accidents - An Overview

Construction workers face some of the most dangerous working conditions in the country on a daily basis. Although there are regulations, statutes, ordinances and industry standards that mandate employers must provide a reasonably safe working environment, construction workers still suffer serious injuries at an alarming rate.

The sheer number of hazards on a construction site makes it virtually impossible to prevent all injuries from occurring. These hazards include falls from scaffolds and other elevations, being struck by moving or falling machinery, electrocution, health hazards resulting from exposure to asbestos and chemicals, injuries caused by defective or unsafe equipment, and lifting and repetitive motion injuries.

If you have suffered or if one of your family members has suffered injuries as the result of a construction accident, an experienced construction accident and injury litigation attorney can help you understand your rights.

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Construction Accident Resource Links

OSHA - Employee Workplace Rights
From the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. What to do if you question the safety of your workplace. Lists addresses and phone numbers for more information.

OSHA - Construction Scaffolding
Overview, press releases, links, OSHA standards and regulations, and a "Scaffolding eTool", which provides illustrated safety checklists for specific types of scaffolds and identifies hazards.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is the federal agency responsible for conducting research and making recommendations for the prevention of work-related disease and injury.

Department of Labor

Resource for workers, including information on each state's workers' compensation laws, whistleblower protection and health and safety guidelines.

National Safety Council - Workplace Safety Compliance
Statistics on workplace injuries and training materials for preventing injuries, such as scaffolding, ladder, and other falls, electrical injuries and more.

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