After several years of troublingly-high rates of fatal injury on New York City construction sites, the city enacted a law in October of 2017 aimed at improving safety through worker education. Local Law 196, which entered into effect on March 1, now requires that all workers on large construction projects within city limits receive a minimum of ten hours of safety training. These training requirements will increase over the course of the next year and a half, with workers ultimately needing between forty and fifty-five hours of training, and supervisors needing between sixty and seventy-five hours of training in order to avoid possible civil penalties.

Startled by a rise in fatalities that was disproportionate to the city’s boom in construction, New York City government officials debated multiple solutions to the issue prior to settling on an increase in training requirements. For example, injuries from falls are the single greatest killer on New York City construction sites, and some developers recommended that requirements for mandatory fall protections on job sites be made more rigorous. The law was also enacted before lawmakers and Department of Buildings officials had reached a conclusion on how many hours of training workers should receive. This was in part because government officials could not reach a consensus on whether the sudden demand for training would result in a shortage of available safety courses or teachers.

The law has received no small amount of negative feedback from developers, contractors, and workers, especially those who operate outside the union system. Criticism has centered on the fact that unions subsidize training for their members, while the cost of training for non-union workers will fall either to those operating non-union worksites or to the workers themselves. Lawmakers addressed this criticism by requiring that training requirements go beyond those required of union members as an effort to level the playing field. Workers constructing one, two, or three-family homes, as well as workers on sites performing only minor alterations, are exempt from training requirements.

The training requirements are set to increase in stages, with workers needing ten hours of training as of March 1, 2018. By December of 2018, the law will require workers to have a Limited Site Safety Training Card, obtained with a minimum of thirty hours of training (with a possible extension of this deadline to June 1, 2019, depending on training availability). As of May 2019, workers must have a Site Safety Training Card, indicating that they have been fully trained. These workers will need an additional ten to twenty-five hours of training beyond the prior requirements. This deadline may be extended to September 1, 2020, depending on whether there is sufficient training capacity.

Workers can complete this training by taking an OSHA 10-hour course, an OSHA 30-hour course, a Department of Buildings-approved 100-hour training program such as an apprenticeship program, or other training that the Department of Buildings specifies. Federal law makes workplace training mandatory for certain employees or for workers on hazardous job sites, such as those involving dangerous chemicals or equipment. However, 10- and 30-hour OSHA courses are not mandatory under federal workplace regulations.