OSHA has recently cracked down on fall safety violators, with penalties reaching high into the hundreds of thousands. Across the country, OSHA is taking contractors to task over fall safety—and sometimes even forcing compliance. 

While it might seem like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is fining contractors for violations that are questionable, there’s ample evidence to suggest the opposite. Unfortunately, the all-too-frequent fall safety violations in the construction industry generally result from employee deaths on the job. 

Here are three examples of recent fall safety violations put forth by OSHA. 

FL roofers fined $174,000  

The OSHA fined two roofing contractors in Fort Lauderdale, FL, working on a Davie site, a total of $174,000 in proposed fines.  

Roofing subcontractor AIA Roofing Contractor was fined $163,000 in proposed fines for three serious violations, including:  

• Working without fall protection on pitched roofs at heights up to 32 feet 
• A worker using a broken harness 
• Workers not being trained in how to recognize and prevent falls 

The primary roofing contractor on the job was Paul Bange Roofing, which was cited for one serious violation with $10,938 in proposed penalties. OSHA’s investigation found that Paul Bange Roofing hadn’t conducted regular inspections of the worksite, as required, to prevent AIA’s workers from being exposed to fall hazards. 

“Our inspectors found the primary contractor and the subcontractor at a Davie work site failing to protect workers from the risks of falls from elevation, the construction industry’s leading cause of death,” said Condell Eastmond, OSHA Area Office Director in Fort Lauderdale. Fall dangers are widely known in the roofing industry as one of the things that employers must protect employees from. “Neither AIA Roofing nor Paul Bange Roofing have a valid excuse for putting their workers in jeopardy.”. 

Nearly one in five workplace deaths occurred in construction in 2021—a third of which were related to falls, trips and slips, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics. 

Updated OSHA fall safety regulations requiring fall restraint systems and the like have been on the books for many years, making contractors who openly flout such laws easy prey for investigators hoping to ensure safety on worksites. Even the smallest infractions can cause an OSHA investigator to linger and possibly impose penalties, and large red flag issues are liable to prompt a harsh response from safety officials. 

Flouting fall safety laws could cost an otherwise picture-perfect contractor hassles in time, money, legal battles, and a damaged reputation. Still, some must learn the hard way. 

Consent order for a repeat offender 

The Department of Labor recently obtained a consent injunction against a repeat offender in New York. The injunction ordered a Rockland County roofing contractor and its owner to provide employees with fall protection equipment and ensure it is being used at all company worksites, as federal law requires.  

The order found that ALJ Home Improvement Inc. has been exposing workers to imminent danger of death or serious injury by allowing them to do roofing work without fall protection. The injunction is the most recent OSHA action against the contractor. Since 2019, ALJ Home Improvement has been cited repeatedly for fall safety violations. The citations were issued after a company employee suffered a fatal fall in 2019 and also in 2022. 

In May, ALJ and its owner, Jose Lema, signed a settlement agreement with OSHA to resolve and affirm willful citations issued in 2021. The agreement includes providing better ways to correct and prevent fall hazards. 

The injunction requires ALJ and Lema to comply with the enhanced abatement provisions of the settlement agreement. Those provisions include: 

• Notifying OSHA of future company job sites. 
• Providing all supervisors with OSHA 30-hour safety training. 
• Hiring a safety consultant to develop safety and health programs and to conduct worksite inspections. 

IF ALJ and Lema don’t comply with the agreement, the Department of Labor, of which OSHA is a part,  could file a contempt motion in federal court. 

In a separate legal action in July, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York filed criminal charges against Jose Lema related to the 2022 worker fatality. 

The injunction is a sort of insurance policy for the Department of Labor. 

“These settlement terms provide extra assurance of compliance, enforceable via contempt in district court, given this employer’s history, and underscore the Department of Labor’s commitment to effective and appropriate legal actions to help ensure that employers correct violations and take substantive steps to prevent them from recurring,” said Jeffrey S. Rogoff, Regional Solicitor of Labor in New York. 

If nearly $174,000 in fines for two contractors and a court injunction and criminal prosecution of another contractor are not enough to convince the doubtful that OSHA officials are dead serious about enforcing fall safety laws and will leave no girder unturned to do it, imagine being slapped with proposed fines totaling more than a half a million dollars.  

OSHA fines contractor $522,000 

The law will come after fall safety scofflaws working in construction with all tools at their disposal, and it’s doing so in the case of another contractor investigated for safety failures that allegedly led to a worker’s fatal fall. 

OSHA announced in November that an investigation recently found a Huntington, NY, contractor could have prevented a worker’s fatal fall at a Glen Cove worksite in April 2023 if the company had followed legally required safeguards to prevent falls. 

The fatal accident happened when a crew was installing metal decking on a flat industrial roof, and a worker fell through an opening to a concrete floor 20 feet below. OSHA’s investigation determined contractor Elite Roofing Inc. did not provide the employees working on the roof with protection against fall hazards, such as guard rails, safety nets, personal fall arrest systems, positioning devices, or fall restraint systems.  

OSHA determined that Elite Roofing Inc. also failed to train employees to recognize and mitigate fall hazards before performing steel erection work, which falls under OSHA’s steel erection standard. 

OSHA issued the contractor six willful violations for fall hazards, one violation per exposed worker, and one serious violation for not training the workers. OSHA has proposed $522,527 in penalties for the violations. The high fines appear related to the fact that OSHA officials found the contractor’s conduct to be willful, if not brazen. 

“Despite knowing the risks from falls and the responsibility to safeguard its employees against them, Elite Roofing Services Inc. chose to disregard the law and the safety of its workers,” said Kevin Sullivan, OSHA’s Area Director in Westbury, Long Island.