After 2 Deaths, New York Roofing Firm Still Ignoring Fall Protections, Claims OSHA

Nanuet, New York-based roofing contractor ALJ Home Improvement Inc. is ignoring safety requirements despite having suffered the loss of two workers since 2019 in falls that were preventable, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has charged,

Seven federal workplace safety inspections in the last four years identified 33 violations, nine of them willful failures to provide required fall protection, at the contractor’s worksites.

OSHA maintains that ALJ Home Improvement was again exposing its employees to potentially deadly harm in August 2022, just six months after an unprotected employee’s fatal fall. OSHA said an inspector who visited an ALJ worksite in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, saw three employees on a roof 18 feet above ground without required fall protection. ALJ Home Improvement was contracted to remove an existing roof and re-install shingles on a single-family residential structure.

OSHA Area Director Lisa Levy in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, alleged that the company “repeatedly refuses to comply with OSHA standards and make worker safety a priority, choosing instead to put profit over the lives of its employees.”

For its latest infractions, OSHA has cited the company with eight violations – four willful and four serious –and proposed a $687,536 penalty for lack of fall and head protection and violations of multiple standards.

ALJ Home Improvement is active in Rockland, Orange, Westchester and Dutchess counties in New York and Bergen County in New Jersey. The company has 15 business days to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA’s area directo, or contest the findings before the independent OSHA review commission.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 378 of the 986 construction workers who died on the job in 2021 were victims of falls from elevation.

Topics New York Claims Workers' Compensation