New York’s construction industry, faced with insurance premiums that have increased by up to a factor of six over the last several years, is trying to convince the state Legislature to amend a labor law that it says has made insurance unaffordable or even unavailable.

“If we were a new company starting up right now, we would not be able to get insurance coverage,” the president of 46-year-old construction company McGowan Corporation, Michael McGowan, told The New York Sun. “My insurance agent has told me that point blank.”

The law has caused the insurance premiums of those builders who can find coverage to increase three- to six fold, according to the executive vice president of the New York State Builders Association, Philip LaRocque. He said the annual cost of liability insurance for many of the contractors he has worked with had increased to $60,000 from $10,000 three years ago.

“My rates have increased 30% to 50% a year … for the past 10 years,” the president of the home-building and remodeling company McClurg Associates, Scott McClurg, said. Mr. McClurg is also president of the Home Builders Association of Central New York Incorporated.

These costs are passed on to the owner of the building, Mr. LaRocque said, driving up the cost of all new construction in the state.

At fault, they say, is increased litigation under three articles of a state labor law that hold contractors and property owners liable for work-site injuries -even if the worker was at fault – if he can prove the site was unsafe. New York is the only state that hasn’t taken similar laws off the books, which, builders groups say, makes contractors and property owners sitting ducks for lawsuits brought by injured workers.

Under the court’s interpretation of the laws, the only defense a builder can make against lawsuits brought under the law is that the injured worker refused to follow the safety procedures or use safety equipment. They cannot argue that the worker’s negligence caused or contributed to the accident.

“Fall down, get hurt, win money: That’s how it works,” the president of an industry group, the Builders Exchange of Rochester, Aaron Hilger, said. “We just want a chance to defend ourselves in court. If the worker is partially at fault, and we’re partially at fault, we’ll pay what we’re responsible for.”

According to a New York City trial lawyer who handles many such cases, Martin Edelman, changing the law will not bring down insurance costs because contractors will still have to pay workers’ compensation. Rather, he said, the companies should start obeying safety regulations. “The small contractors say they need a break. They don’t deserve a break. Most of them should go to jail,” Mr. Edelman, who was president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association from 2003 to 2004, said.

“We are the safest state in the United States for contractors,” Mr. McClurg said, calling Mr. Edelman’s remarks “incendiary” and “utterly ridiculous.” He added that his company so scrupulously follows safety regulations that in the 31 years it has operated, it has never had a catastrophic injury.

“We should punish unsafe contractors, but we should not have a labor law that punishes everybody,” Mr. Hilger said.

New York is widely considered to have one of the safest construction industries of any state, a fact that some trial lawyers and labor leaders attribute to the success of its labor laws.

“It’s the nature of the beast. If you do not have to do something, you won’t,” a lawyer for several local ironworkers, Kevin McDermott, said.

Not all union leaders agree, however.

“The law is good for the protection of my guys, but the attorneys are just out of control … and that has to stop. If it takes getting rid of [the law], then that’s what we’ve got to do,” the general secretary of the Ironworkers International Union, Michael Fitzpatrick, told The New York Sun. “You can’t drive down the street without seeing a billboard for an attorney saying, ‘Have you been injured on a construction site? I can get you a million dollars.'”