New York’s Scaffold Law is the strictest worker-protection rule in American construction — and, builders argue, the most expensive. Enacted in 1885 as Labor Law §240, it makes property owners and general contractors absolutely liable for gravity-related injuries on a job site: a fall from a scaffold or ladder, or a worker struck by a falling object. The worker’s own negligence is no defense, and no other state has anything like it.
The Insurance Bill
That absolute liability is what insurers price. A single serious-injury verdict under the law can exceed $5 million to $10 million in New York City, and workers’ compensation does not block a third-party suit. A December 2025 study by HR&A Advisors for the Building Trades Employers’ Association found New York construction insurance premiums run 200 to 500 percent higher than in comparable states, consuming 8 to 10 percent of total development costs, against 2 to 4 percent in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Illinois.
What It Costs the City
The added cost lands on everything the city builds. Reformers put the Scaffold Law’s share at 5 to 10 percent of total construction costs, and estimate more than $1.1 billion in savings on the Penn Station redevelopment and the Second Avenue subway’s second phase. For affordable housing, the industry says the savings would fund 8 to 10 percent more units per project; a RAND Institute analysis put the statewide figure at 38,000 additional homes.
The Other Side
The cost figures come from industry groups, and defenders say the law forces owners to provide proper equipment. But reformers note the law has not made New York safer — the city’s 2023 construction fatality rate, 11.6 per 100,000 workers, exceeded the national average of 9.6 — and a New York Times investigation found networks staging accidents to exploit it.
Reform bills have stalled in Albany since 2019, but a federal preemption bill and a 2027 budget fight keep the issue alive.