A union member's veiw on responsibility and construction work.

Monday, November 12, 2007 | 0

By Thomas G. Pryce

I was sitting in my office at the Ironworkers Hall recently, and I got to thinking. Down the corridor an OSHA safety trainer was conducting a class for about 20 men. They probably would rather have gone out for a fish fry with their wife on Friday night or watched a ball game and could have slept in and maybe mowed their lawn on Saturday, but they were here.

I thought back a few weeks when, as chance would have it, I was on the scene of a fatal construction accident. It’s an eerie scene when the normal noise and activity of a construction site suddenly freezes and is replaced by cops putting tape around the scene. firefighters and EMTs do their thing and stunned workers and bystanders come to grips with what has happened.

It brought back memories and emotions that are usually repressed. I can’t help seeing Fritz Carpenter who fell at the Energy From Waste plant or my buddy Steve Wojcik who fell at Somerset. Louie DiSarno didn’t fall that far at the Outlet Mall. Like August Corviso of North Carolina, they went to work one day and didn’t go home.

I never met Corviso. He was a non-union guy from out of town. By all accounts, he was a nice guy, a hard worker. I don’t know if his friends called him Auggie, if he had a wife and kids or what his hobbies were.

But I do know a few things. He worked for a company that hired men “off the books” to avoid paying taxes, insurance and benefits. Even though they had already been written up by OSHA, there was not even the pretense of having “fall” protection or safe work practices. Because of this, the other man who fell, doesn’t have the “safety net” of workers' compensation. They were hired to construct a hotel by a developer who probably wanted to get his job done within a budget. Who wants to pay more than they have to for a hotel room? Not me. But if you stop to think, there’s more to it than the next dollar.

There is the concept of a “responsible” contractor, as in lowest responsible bidder for public works projects. What would be the definition of a responsible contractor? Do they invest in training and provide a safe work site? Do they pay into the workers comp and the unemployment system? Do they pay taxes, Social Security and Medicare? Do they provide a living wage and benefits to their employees? Do we care?

Time was when us Ironworkers talked safety and then took chances anyway — thought we were clever when we could give the appearance of tying off but didn’t. Some accidents may be unavoidable, construction is inherently dangerous. Most are the result of unsafe practices and conditions and that has become increasingly unacceptable to the unions, union contractors and responsible construction managers, developers and their customers. There are those in non-union construction who treat their employees with respect and do the right thing. But there are many that do not, and their unorganized workers are in no position to challenge them.

I’m a union guy and it would be nice if all construction was done union. We can’t force workers or employers to organize. But all of us are the ultimate customer, the consumer, if you will. We all drive over the bridges, send our kids to the school, shop in the mall and eat in the burger joints. We can have a say in who builds them and how they go about it. We can insist on certain standards. Will we insist on “responsibility?”

For the sake of those guys in the classroom down the hall and thousands like them, I hope so.

Thomas G. Pryce is a a resident of Youngstown, New York. This column was reprinted from the Niagara Gazette.