New York lawmakers ask for firm to be taken off job because of injuries

• Another worker was injured at the construction site of a Rockaway, New York, affordable housing development being run by a construction company that lawmakers asked to be taken off the project.
• Earlier this month, a construction worker contractor Joy Construction was injured while working on building Edgemere Commons.
• In January, several elected officials rallied at the site, calling on Joy Construction to be removed from the project due to a previous history of worksite incidents at other developments and because of a separate worker injury at Edgemere Commons.
• The New York Department of Buildings found that the site safety coordinator’s license had expired about a week prior and that the coordinator had not properly renewed their license.
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DOL issues final rule for independent contractors

• The U.S. Department of Labor published its final rule on classifying workers as either employees or independent contractors.
• Under the rule, the DOL returns to the “totality of the circumstances test,” with a focus on workers’ economic dependency on their employers.
• Employers don’t contribute to workers’ compensation or unemployment insurance, withhold taxes from, provide benefits to, or comply with federal and state overtime and minimum wage requirements for independent contractors.
• The DOL’s final rule is intended to assist employers in determining when an employee is misclassified as an independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs labor conditions and worker well-being at the federal level.
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Iowa school workers exposed to Asbestos

• A school district in northeast Iowa allowed some of its employees and other workers to be inside an asbestos-contaminated building despite a warning from state regulators to leave the premises.
• The North Linn Community School District was fined after the expansive renovation of its middle and high school complex near Coggon in 2022.
• The Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the district $70,000, and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources recently fined the district $6,000.
• The contamination resulted from a multimillion-dollar renovation of the buildings that included the addition of air conditioning.
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Construction workers deaths increase in New York

• Despite a decrease in construction worker deaths across the state in 2022, more construction workers died on the job in New York City than in the previous year, according to a recent report from the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health.
• A drop in inspections reportedly led to many of the deaths.
• In 2022, the most recent year with data available, 24 construction workers died in New York City, compared with 20 construction-related fatalities in 2021.
• Across the state, 50 construction workers died on the job in 2022, down from 61 deaths a year earlier, NYCOSH reported using data from the city Department of Buildings and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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