{"id":496539,"date":"2026-01-06T13:11:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T13:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/496539\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T13:11:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T13:11:20","slug":"reform-the-new-york-state-scaffold-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/496539\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform the New York State Scaffold Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the first time in a long time, New York is dreaming big. From building hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units to expanding our aging transit system, the ambitions of leaders like Gov. Hochul and Mayor Mamdani reflect a growing acceptance of the fact that to make New York the most affordable and dynamic economy it can be, we must embrace the promise of the abundance movement<\/a>. But to do that meaningfully, we have to find ways to build more, build it faster, and build it cheaper without\u00a0straining public budgets.<\/p>\n

While there are many factors at play to blame for the skyrocketing cost of building in an economy the size of New York\u2019s, one culprit looms above all others as not only massively influential, but also fixable: the\u00a0Scaffold\u00a0Law<\/a>. And no, that\u2019s not\u00a0scaffolding\u00a0law, which the city<\/a>\u00a0recently\u00a0reformed, but an arcane state labor law\u00a0that has exponentially inflated the cost of construction beyond reason for decades.<\/p>\n

In short, whereas every other state in America relies on a comparative negligence model to determine liability for who is to blame for a construction accident, New York imposes absolute liability on property owners and contractors no matter what.<\/p>\n

For years, the debate around this issue has been quietly deadlocked between the forces for common sense reform\u00a0to dramatically lower the cost of construction, and personal injury lawyers who reap increasingly large windfalls by exploiting this\u00a0law. But just last year the\u00a0New York Civil Justice Institute reported\u00a0<\/a>\u201cthere is widespread abuse of the\u00a0law\u201d as judgments stretch \u201cto multiple millions of dollars based on injuries that are self-inflicted, exaggerated or fabricated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite what opponents of\u00a0reform\u00a0claim, insurance firms aren\u2019t the issue. Rather, it\u2019s exorbitantly high\u00a0legal fees that are draining settlement funds and so singularly burdening New York builders. As a result, in less than a 25-year span, the number of Scaffold\u00a0Law personal injury cases increased more than fivefold, even as injury rates declined.<\/p>\n

Now, a new\u00a0economic report by HR&A Advisors<\/a>\u00a0exposes the true scale of this\u00a0law\u2019s cost on our economy. Drawing on proprietary data from more than 50 of the state\u2019s largest builders, developers, public authorities \u2014 such as the MTA and School Construction Authority \u2014 and insurers, HR&A found that insurance premiums in New York are four to five times higher than other states<\/a>\u00a0without actually improving worker safety. In effect, this invisible tax is siphoning off money that should be spent on bricks, mortar, and worker wages to line the pockets of well-heeled trial lawyers.<\/p>\n

The burden falls heaviest on subcontractors \u2014 the small and mid-sized businesses, including the vast majority of Minority and Women-owned Businesses, that perform the work. To that point, HR&A\u2019s study found that for high-risk trades like concrete, bridge painting and steel erection, insurance costs can devour 15 to 20% of their total revenue.<\/p>\n

Most alarmingly, the report reveals the harsh reality of this issue: from the largest infrastructure upgrades to the smallest parks projects, the\u00a0Scaffold\u00a0Law\u00a0is a poisonous pill on every construction budget in the state.<\/p>\n

By\u00a0reforming\u00a0the\u00a0Scaffold\u00a0Law, New York could save more than $1.1 billion on the Penn Station redevelopment and Phase 2 of the Second Ave. subway<\/a>. As Mamdani plans to spend upwards of $100 billion on affordable housing development in the next decade, the city could save $8 billion, or increase the number of units the city builds by up to 10%.<\/p>\n

Of course, nothing is more important than worker safety, but the data proves the irrefutable: we can protect workers, build more efficiently, and create jobs all at the same time.\u00a0When 6 to 8%<\/a> of every construction dollar spent in New York is wasted on insurance premiums covering absolute liability, the Scaffold\u00a0Law\u00a0is killing our ability to make anything affordable from housing to new schools and subway lines. For every $100 million saved on insurance costs, builders could create 600 full-time prevailing wage jobs.<\/p>\n

Encouragingly, Mamdani<\/a>\u00a0has expressed strong support for insurance\u00a0reform, acknowledging it is an obstacle to our shared housing and infrastructure goals. And as leaders in Washington have put forth legislation in Congress to address the issue, there is hope yet. But as long as the sky-high cost of construction insurance goes unaddressed, it will be impossible for New York to embrace an affordable future \u2014 and put more New Yorkers to work building it all at the same time.<\/p>\n

Crowley is president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers\u2019 Association.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time in a long time, New York is dreaming big. From building hundreds of thousands…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":496540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-496539","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-opinion","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115848326988432493","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}