ConDig (22-Aug-22). The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has fined a New York-based roofing and siding contractor $1.3 million after a worker fell to their death — the second in three years.
OSHA launched a probe into Nanuet-based ALJ Home Improvement Inc. in February after a worker fell from the roof of a three-story residential construction project in Spring Valley. In February 2019, another company employee died in a fall at a Kiamesha Lake work site.
The agency found that ALJ failed to provide fall protection training or ensure effective fall protection safeguards were used. It also failed to provide eye protection for employees using pneumatic nail guns, exposing them to the risk of serious eye injuries.
OSHA said that ALJ’s knowledge of fall and eye protection requirements, and its deliberate and recurring violations of these standards, led the agency to issue egregious citations for each instance an employee at the Spring Valley site was exposed to the hazards.
In total, ALJ Home Improvement was cited for nine willful and three serious violations.
“ALJ Home Improvement continues to ignore the law and callously exposes its employees to falls from elevation, the construction industry’s deadliest hazard,” said OSHA regional administrator Richard Mendelson in New York.
“Their repeated willful violations are evidence of an indefensible and inexcusable pattern of disregard for the safety of their employees. OSHA will continue to take strong enforcement actions against such employers.”
Since 2019, OSHA has inspected ALJ Home Improvement six times, issuing 21 violations and levying $299,425 in fines. Its infractions include multiple willful fall protection and eye protection violations, cited most recently in November 2021.
ALJ Home Improvement Inc., a roofing and siding contractor working throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, has 15 business days from receipt of its citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA, or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
Last month, OSHA fined a Fort Pierce carpentry contractor $32,113 after 19-year-old worker suffered fatal injuries in 25-foot fall.
The agency cited Union Carpentry LLC – a Fort Pierce carpentry contractor – after a federal workplace safety investigation determined the fatal fall could have been prevented if the employer used required fall protection.