This week, City Council will consider five pieces of
legislation written in response to this year’s devastating Market Street
building collapse, which claimed six lives. While much of the proposed
legislation focuses on tweaks to work-site regulations to avoid future
tragedies, it also includes a controversial and far-reaching regulation that
would require all construction workers to obtain special photo ID cards from
the Department of Licenses & Inspections.
The “wallet-sized ID cards” would indicate that a worker had
attended a 10-hour Occupational Safety and Health Administration course on
construction safety, training that would also be mandated by the bill for
anyone working at any construction site in Philadelphia. While the bill has its
positives, the ID requirement has generated broad concerns from builder’s
associations, Philadelphia’s large immigrant communities and L&I itself.
James Engler, director of legislation for Councilman Jim
Kenney, who sponsored the bill, said the legislation was aimed at clamping down
on “unscrupulous contractors,” saying it would make it easier for L&I to
shut down unsafe job sites.
“There’s no other way to do that,” he said curiously, adding
that he had heard few concerns about the proposal.
But Erika Almiron, executive director of the
immigrant-rights group Juntos, worries that the proposal would create needless
obstacles for impoverished, undocumented immigrant laborers — especially when
it comes to the cost of obtaining the cards.
“Most workers who are day laborers are not making a ton of
money on any given day, so anything that is a high cost is going to be a
concern,” she said. “We’ve seen immigrants and all kinds of people in this city
who don’t have access to identification.”
Almiron added that while her group supported worker-safety
training for all, it was “concerned” about the lack of details behind the
mandatory ID-card provision.
“It all depends on what the requirements would be to obtain
the cards,” she added.
But right now, those details are scant. Engler said Council
does not yet have figures on how many laborers would be affected by the
legislation, the potential fees for training and obtaining the cards, or the
costs of implementing and enforcing such a requirement.
It was also unclear if workers would need to already possess
a valid form of identification in order to apply for the worker IDs. An
interestingly timed piece of legislation introduced last week by Councilwoman
Maria Quiñones-Sánchez would allow the city to begin issuing municipal ID cards
that could serve as proof of residency. While that bill was widely praised as a
needed step toward integrating undocumented immigrants, Sánchez, who represents
a district with a large Hispanic immigrant population, may also be fearful of
blowback from constituents who might be unable to apply for worker IDs.
Engler insisted Council and L&I would work out all of
these issues and determine a funding source for the worker ID program over an
18-month timeline for implementation, assuming the bill is passed.
But L&I, whose staff shortages and mismanagement many
blame for the Market Street collapse, doesn’t seem to be sure of its own
abilities to operate as an ID issuing authority.
L&I Commissioner Carlton Williams said, in Council
testimony on the worker-ID legislation, that “these provisions are well beyond
the department’s core enforcement capabilities.”
Williams also raised the specter of possible legal
conflicts, saying, “federal law would preempt the city from carrying out the
provisions.”
Meanwhile, the Building Industry Association of Philadelphia
(BIA), which represents developers, called the bill “redundant,” noting that
OSHA already issues its own training-certification cards.
“Forcing even workers sweeping up the job site to have the
same training as a designated safety official is just too sweeping,” said Anne
Fadullon, BIA vice president.
Engler noted there have been problems in other cities with
workers forging the OSHA-issued cards, which do not feature photos of
applicants. However, he also confirmed that no other city has gone as far as
issuing its own photo IDs for laborers as a way to combat this fraud.
Reports have swirled that the bill is being pushed by the
city’s building trade unions, who view the IDs as an avenue for L&I to
crack down on undocumented workers, sometimes viewed as unfair competition.
“There are a set of unions that see undocumented workers as
competition instead of a strength,” said Almiron. “We’re concerned when we see
unions that have not historically supported immigrant workers trying to make
legislation around this, and how this will impact our people’s ability to make
money and put food on the table.”
Engler countered that the legislation was “something we have
to do to ensure everyone, union or non-union, is safe on a job site.”
While Almiron agreed that all employees deserve a safe
workplace, she said that the bill seemed to be more about clamping down on
those at the bottom rather than those at the top.
“It should be on the people who are in charge of those sites
to make sure their workers are trained,” she said. “I don’t think workers
should be worried about carrying around ID cards.”
Source: CityPaper.net
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