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By Doug Cunningham

Even though most workers dying in construction accidents are on low-rise non-union worksites, New York City Buildings Department is still focusing more enforcement on union high-rise jobs. Lou Coletti is President of the Building Trades Employers Association. Coletti says on average over the years OSHA records show union high-rise jobs are far safer than non-union.
[Coletti]: “Seventy-five percent of the fatalities are on non-union jobs below ten stories.”

OSHA’s Regional Deputy Administrator is Richard Mendelson.
He says the federal agency realizes that there are more fatalities on non-union construction sites and assigns inspections accordingly.

"The accident trends - for fatal accidents this is, one-third on unions sites and two-thirds on non-union sites. And our inspection targeting mimics that almost to the same percentage—that’s about one-third of our inspection resources go to union sites and about two-thirds of our inspection resources go to non-union sites.”

(Freelance reporter Mike Cliff provided audio used in this report.)