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The new residential development at 202 Tillary Street in Downtown Brooklyn is being run by two contractors with a record of multiple worker fatalities. As many as nine, if you're counting.

This month two notorious non-union builders, Joy Construction and Maddd Equities, finally landed the financing they needed to partner up on a large residential project in Downtown Brooklyn. That’s where they will erect a 465-unit high-rise complex at 202 Tillary Street.

If you’re a non-union construction worker and you’re offered a job at this site, you may want to take a pass. No fewer than nine recent worker deaths have been attributed to job sites run by Maddd and Joy.

No Joy in Queens

Earlier this year, elected officials and Laborers union Local 79 called for South Queens, New York, to remove Joy Construction from a project they were managing there after two worker injuries occurred on the site within two months. Neither incident had been reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) by the contractor.

South Queens’ Department of Buildings issued a stop work order on the construction site after the most recent injury and discovered during its investigation that the Joy safety coordinator had an expired license. A new project safety coordinator was found four days later, and the Department of Buildings allowed work to resume, even though workers still complained of hazardous work conditions.

"It’s really not right. [Non-union workers] get injured all the time. [They] don’t get benefits, many of them are getting paid $10 or $15 an hour. We need more projects to be awarded to unions.”

But Wait, There’s More

In December 2022, another Joy Construction worker was killed on a Tremont construction site when he was hit in the head by an excavator. The worker, 57-year-old Linden Samuel, was struck by the excavator’s bucket and pronounced dead at the scene. A work stoppage was ordered.

In other incidents, one Joy Construction worker died on a job when he fell through an unguarded window and descended 64 floors to the ground. Joy was cited by OSHA for failure to guard a window opening, among other violations. Another Joy worker — an overnight security guard — died at a different job site after being exposed to carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty portable gas generator.

Members of New York Local 79 have tallied the fatalities that have happened on Joy work sites and they attribute six worker deaths to projects affiliated with Joy Construction.

“This is a company whose history appears to bring more pain and suffering than joy,” said Assembly Member Khaleel Anderson. “With a disturbing pattern of exploitative and unsafe construction practices resulting in multiple worker deaths and criminal lawsuits, we must stand against Joy Construction in solidarity with laborers and the community.”

The Maddd Truth

Meanwhile, as workers were dying on Joy construction sites, their partner in the Downtown Brooklyn housing project, Maddd Equities, was overseeing one of New York City’s most notorious and deadly construction sites at 20 Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx.

In the course of renovating that building, three different workers died in three separate incidents that occurred over four years. OSHA has issued numerous fines, violations and work stoppages for the negligence. The renovation ended up taking five years to complete, and cost the lives of three men.

Joy and Maddd, which are frequent partners on affordable housing projects, oversaw work sites where no fewer than nine non-union workers have died. And judging from the findings of the OSHA investigations, each and every one of them was preventable had the contractor paid proper attention to worker safety.

Safety By The Numbers

Construction is a dangerous profession and accidents happen. Sometimes those accidents are fatal. But in New York City, more than 80% of all job-site fatalities occur on non-union job sites like those run by Maddd and Joy.

In a recent interview, one member of Local 79, Jewel Tolliver, summed it up. “I meet non-union laborers. They tell me their safety materials aren’t provided. If it’s not forced under a union, or through the law, a lot of these companies won’t provide [safety materials or training]. If you were on a union site they would give you health and safety standards for dealing with [dangerous materials] or you would know them because you were trained properly to handle certain materials. It’s really sad and doesn’t get enough attention. Some of these companies are taking advantage with non-union construction. A lot of the workers are immigrants, and undocumented people of color. It’s really not right. They get injured all the time. These workers don’t get benefits, many of them are getting paid $10 or $15 an hour. We need more projects to be awarded to unions.”

When non-union builders put profit over safety, the project suffers, New York City suffers, and workers die. We should heed the words of both Assembly Member Anderson and union member Tollison and stand against non-union exploitation of workers, the likes of which routinely happens on Maddd and Joy work sites, and stand with New York City’s construction unions.

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