Carlos Moncayo was just 22 years old when he was crushed to death by a thousand-pound pile of mud at a construction site in Manhattan’s meatpacking district.
More than seven years later, a building safety bill bearing his name could become law, if Governor Kathy Hochul choose to sign. The lawknown as Carlos’ Law, will dramatically increase the fines corporations face for construction accidents that lead to criminal convictions.
While the bill was passed by both houses of the State Legislature on the last day of last month’s session, Ms. Hochul’s office only said that she was considering it.
Prosecutions of injury or death on construction sites are extremely rare across the country, but the Moncayo case is an exception. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office pursued the charges, and the general contractor, Harco Construction, convicted of manslaughternegligent and reckless homicide crimes.
The company was ultimately sentenced to pay just $10,000 because of state-imposed limits on corporate penalties. The District Attorney at the time, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., denounce the resultsays the fine is just “monopoly money” for the company.
Proponents of Carlos Law say the specter of much higher fines in such cases will deter contractors from cutting safety, sometimes with dangerous consequences.
The city’s Department of Construction has recorded 84 construction-related deaths since 2015. Statistics show that deaths are more likely to occur at non-administrative construction sites, where public Employees may face pressure to comply with unreasonable requests.
Diana Florence, who served as lead prosecutor on Mr. Moncayo’s case, said in an interview that many construction injuries and even deaths were not properly investigated in the first place.
But Moncayo’s case was a coincidence: A police supervisor responding to the scene had done construction work, and he immediately recognized the pit Moncayo was working in. unreinforced, as it should have been.
“He realized that the trench was essentially a ticking time bomb,” Ms. Florence said.
Prosecutors later argued that supervisors ordered Moncayo, who was undocumented and not part of the union, to go down the pit despite the danger, because the project was behind schedule.
The location they are working at, near the High Line, was once a Pastis restaurant and is being turned into a Restoration Hardware store.
The case spurred a years-long effort to increase fines in such cases and expand liability so that companies can be held accountable for the actions of more employees.
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Carlos’ law was first introduced in 2017 and passed by the state Assembly that year, but was pushed to the state Senate by opposition from Republicans and the real estate industry.
However, this year there was a breakthrough. The Mason Tenders County Council, a coalition of construction unions and the main force behind the bill, reached an agreement in May with the Real Estate Board of New York to regulate the law, including including changes to the terms affecting supervisors and administrators.
The adopted version allows the court to decide compensation without limitation and increases the minimum fine to $500,000 for felony felonies and $300,000 for misdemeanors in injury-related cases. or death.
“We think that will draw the attention of rogue developers and contractors who have put their workers’ lives at risk,” said Mike Hellstrom, business manager for mason tenders. risk in pursuit of profit.
In a joint statement after the bill was passed, Mr Hellstrom and James Whelan, the chairman of the Real Estate Council, said they had “every intention to build upon the partnership between our institutions. I contributed to this legislative achievement.”
Ms. Hochul will run for office in November and enjoy strong support from labor organizations, leading Carlos Law supporters to believe she will soon sign it into law. Deadline to make any more than 1,000 bills passed both chambers in the last session at the end of the year.
Comprehensive data collection on criminal cases stemming from workplace injuries and deaths is complex. Federal regulators occasionally refer cases to the Justice Department for prosecution but must meet sufficient evidence of “willful violations” that caused an employee’s death.
State and local prosecutors can press charges, as they did in the Moncayo case. In fact, a few months after Moncayo’s death, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and several other agencies, including the City Bureau of Investigation, announced the creation of a Construction Fraud Task Force to focus into misconduct amid a new construction boom.
Current district attorney, Alvin Bragg, urged Ms Hochul to sign the Carlos Law, which he said would establish “meaningful deterrence”.
“Companies are held liable when a worker is injured or killed as a result of unsafe conditions,” Mr. Bragg said in a statement.
The fines mentioned are different from those imposed by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration or local agencies for workplace violations.
The New York Occupational Safety and Health Commission, an advocacy group promoting the bill, has urged other prosecutors across the state to follow the direction of the Manhattan district attorney’s office and be more proactive in their actions. prosecution of such cases.
Proponents of the Carlos Law, including NYCOSH, say that even if prosecutions remain exceptional, the law will curb unscrupulous builders, by increasing costs related to public injury core.
“We want Carlos law cases to be rare because we want employers to be responsible and follow all applicable health and safety standards,” said Charlene Obernauer, chief executive officer of the group. and does not put workers’ lives in jeopardy,” said Charlene Obernauer, the group’s chief executive officer.
Diana Moreno, interim executive director of Empowering New Immigrant Communities, a Queens-based nonprofit, said signing the bill would address a “shameful injustice”.
“The risk of paying a substantial fine, at least $500,000 under this new law, will ultimately hold developers and construction companies accountable and incentivize them to maintain their standards,” she said. health and safety standards.
Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who sponsored the bill in Congress with James Sanders Jr. in the Senate, saying the matter was her personal. About 25 years ago, her brother, Wagner, fell off a scaffold while doing construction work and became permanently disabled.
She now represents the Flatbush portion of Brooklyn and counts among her constituencies many undocumented immigrants from the Caribbean and from countries in Africa who work in construction.
“You have a lot of construction companies that take advantage of migrant workers, pay low wages, don’t train them, don’t provide safe areas for them to work in because they don’t value their lives,” she said. “They know that these immigrants don’t have the resources to pursue a lawsuit or claim, so they take advantage.”
Before voting on the bill, Congresswoman Jessica Ramos reads the name workers who have died in New York since Moncayo, noting that most of them are Latino, and many are her neighbors in Queens.
Francisco Moya, now a member of the City Council representing Ramos’ roughly Queens area, helped write the bill while he was on Council. He also feels a personal connection to the Moncayo case. He and Mr. Moncayo share Ecuadorian roots and live just a few blocks apart.
“This is a victory in the battle to make sure that every construction worker who leaves the house in the morning to go to work is alive to come home for dinner.”
