Public Employee Press

State handcuffs NYPD effort to skirt safety law

In a union victory that protects hundreds of employees at the Manhattan South Task Force, the state Dept. of Labor denied a request from the city Police Dept. to exempt the West 42nd Street site from the requirement to have two evacuation routes.

“In the rare case of a fire blocking the only exit, people could die,” said Lisa Baum, principal program coordinator in the DC 37 Safety and Health Dept.

After DOL’s Public Employee Safety and Health Bureau found the New York Police Dept. in violation, the city agency sought a variance.

Experts, including PESH engineers, Baum and DC 37 attorney Dena Klein, testified before an impartial DOL hearing officer, who ruled June 3 that the NYPD had failed to show that it could make the site “as safe as if it complied with the safety and health standard.”

PESH requires buildings to have two means of egress far enough from each other so that if one is blocked, employees can escape from the other in an emergency. Manhattan South’s four-story 1954 building, flanked by a hotel and Con Edison plant and walled in from the rear, has just one exit.

To avoid the PESH regulation, Klein argued, the building would need “protections in place to provide the same degree of safety required by law.” The agency said it would have fire drills and install smoke detectors, which are required anyway, and put in a wheel chair lift, “which was nice,” Baum said, “but does not meet the requirements for an acceptable emergency egress.”

Baum, Clerical Division Rep Nate Hurt and Blue Collar Division Rep Yolanda Johnson have visited the site to work with the Police Dept. on a safety solution for the Local 1549 and 1597 members who work there 24/7. The Dept. of Citywide Administrative Services, which manages the building, has not said whether or when it will address the DOL ruling, and the union is watching to see if the city will relocate Manhattan South to a safer facility.

Meanwhile, the NYPD is racking up daily fines for the violation.

“The Department of Labor sided with the union and placed the safety of workers first,” Klein said. “It may be difficult and expensive for an employer to comply with a particular state safety law, but that does not outweigh employees’ health and safety interests.”