Dying to Make a Living: NYC’s Immigrant Workers Demand Dignity and Respect

Members of New Immigrant Community Empowerment [NICE] call for the enforcement of Carlos’ Law — the measure codified late last year to deter criminal developers from endangering the lives of vulnerable workers. Photos by Joe Maniscalco

By Joe Maniscalco

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration recorded the deaths of 20 New York City construction workers in 2015 — the same year a 22-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant named Carlos Moncayo was crushed to death helping to erect what is now Restoration Hardware and the RH Rooftop Restaurant on 9th Avenue in NYC’s Meatpacking District.

Members of NICE — New Immigrant Community Empowerment — assembled across the street from the trendy locale on Friday, May 28 — Workers Memorial Day — because New York City construction workers, most of them unrepresented and untrained Latinex immigrants just like Carlos Moncayo — are still dying on the job in heinous numbers all these years later.

Here’s a snapshot: Last year, 22 New York City construction workers went to work and never returned home. Another 20 construction workers died on the job the year before that. The year prior, the pandemic was in full swing, so the death toll dropped off to 13. In 2019, however, the number of New York City construction workers killed on the job, according to OSHA stats, came in at 24. 

The partygoers whooping it up at the celebration happening just next door to the NICE demonstration on Friday were oblivious to all the death — and who is doing most of the dying.

In the latest “Deadly Skyline” report from NYCOSH — the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health finds “Latinx workers make up a disproportionately high percentage of worker fatalities in New York” and were “more likely to die on the job in NYS in 2021.” 

It’s been that way for as long as this labor reporter has been on the beat.

In 2016, the New York City Department of Investigation determined “numerous issues with respect to workers’ safety, specifically that a trench was unprotected, unfortified and could endangers workers,” were identified well before Moncayo’s grisly death on 9th Avenue. “Work in the trench, however, continued at [Foreman Wilmer] Cueva’s direction for nearly two more hours after the original warning was given.”

NICE members give testimony about the dangerous and often deadly working conditions on New York City construction sites.

“Carlos Moncayo died in a building that made millions for its owners,” NICE Executive Director Nilbia Coyote told demonstrators. “But they didn’t care about the life of our compañero.”

Moncayo’s 2015 death has led to criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment convictions in the case, as well as a bill signed into law late last year, named in honor of Carlos Moncayo, which increases the criminal penalty for a worker’s death from $10,000 to $500,000.

But NICE members said on Friday they are still “waiting for that law to be enforced,” and won’t stop agitating until there is “safety and dignity and workers’ rights on every job site.”

One of the ways NICE responds to these kinds of ongoing injustices is offering workers certified safety training classes so they can better empower themselves on dangerous non-union job sites. Friday’s demonstration included a salute to a group of construction workers who recently completed their OSHA 30 safety training course.

NICE Executive Director Executive Director Nilbia Coyote addresses demonstrators holding a banner bearing the names of members killed on the job.

Construction worker Francisco Palacios said he was actually ridiculed on a non-union job site for having the proper OSHA training and made to feel like “licenses weren’t necessary.” Ultimately, he said through an interpreter, “I was fired because it bothered them I demanded better working conditions.”

Another construction worker who worked non-union jobs before joining Laborers Local 79 a few years ago, said he went two years without proper training, had his wages withheld, and was never given any benefits.

“When I spoke up, I was fired,” he said. “I experienced firsthand some of the injustices immigrant workers have to go through.”

NICE’s Training & Education Department is staffed with two full-time OSHA trainers and manages to provide workers with ESL classes, as well as basic training in a variety of building trades skills.

More could be done — but that would require more funding and support from the New York City Council. 

In the meantime, construction workers keep dying.