OSHA Violations | Inside Look at Statistics

Whether it’s a single-family home, apartment complex, town home development, shopping plaza, business center, or road expansion, some part of your local community is under construction.

Typically, we drive past without so much as a glance.

General Contractors, Builders, Roofing companies, and Landscape or Landscape Maintenance companies commonly face extraordinary safety risks every day.

OSHA Responsibilities for General Contractors, Subcontractors and More

Under the laws of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) employers have a responsibility to provide a safe workplace and a safe job site.

Our firm represents many different types of companies in the construction industry. We ensure that they understand and are following the standards of OSHA to keep their employees safe and be in a strong position to defend an OSHA citation if something goes wrong. We commonly start by evaluating the following about our clients:

• Do they understand the potential impact an accident could have on their employees?
• Do they understand the potential impact an accident could have on their company?
• What about the impact of an injury? Or worse, a fatality?
• What do their employee training practices look like?
• Do they have policy and procedures in place related to OSHA standards?
• Do they regularly conduct self-inspections related to relevant OSHA standards?
• Do they know what OSHA standards they are supposed to be following?

Most Dangerous Jobs – According to a 2019 report by CNBC the 10 most dangerous jobs in America (#1 being the most dangerous) are:

1. Logging Workers
2. Fishers and related fishing workers
3. Aircraft Pilots and Flight Engineers
4. Roofers
5. Waste Management collectors
6. Driver/Sales workers and truck drivers
7. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural workers
8. Structural Iron and Steel workers
9. First-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers
10. First-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers

Our firm commonly represents five out of these ten industry categories.

It is our job as legal professionals to help our clients help themselves; to make sure that they either have the knowledge or know where to obtain the information necessary to understand and follow relevant OSHA standards.

In addition, we need to help our clients understand how a violation of those standards can severely impact their employees and their company.

Top OSHA Violations | Construction Companies Rank Highly

OSHA released its Top 10 most frequently violated standards for 2019. May I have the envelope please. . . the #1 violation is Fall protection, construction (29 CFR 1926.501):

2. Hazard communication standard, general industry (29 CFR 1910.1200)
3. Scaffolding, general requirements, construction (29 CFR 1926.451)
4. Control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout), general industry (29 CFR 1910.147)
5. Respiratory protection, general industry (29 CFR 1910.134)
6. Ladders, construction (29 CFR 1926.1053)
7. Powered industrial trucks, general industry (29 CFR 1910.178)
8. Fall Protection–Training Requirements (29 CFR 1926.503)
9. Machinery and Machine Guarding, general requirements (29 CFR 1910.212)
10. Eye and Face Protection (29 CFR 1926.102)

Last year alone there were 7,248 OSHA citations related to Fall Protection across all industries amounting to $39,313,307.00 in penalties.

Of the 7,248 citations, 7,101 of them belong specifically to the construction industry (www.osha.gov).

Those numbers should scare the hard hats off every employer in Construction (put them back on – safety first). Unfortunately, Fall Protection has been the #1 violation since 2011.

Also dedicated to Construction is #3 Scaffolding with 3,336 citations totaling $9,909,967.00 in penalties, #6 Ladders with 2,849 citations totaling $7,023,686.00 in penalties, and #8 Fall Protection-Training Requirements with 2,124 citations totaling $3,334,517.00 in penalties.

Interesting fact:

Outside of the construction industry, many of the injuries and deaths reported are the result of transportation accidents, not jobsite accidents (2019 report by CNBC).

The most common fatal accidents in the Landscape industry are not the result of a bad encounter with a lawnmower or other form of lawn equipment, as one might think. But they are the result of transportation incidents traveling to and from job sites.

Similarly, the most common fatal accidents reported by Ranchers/Agricultural, Waste Management Collection, Driver/Sales and Trucking are the result of transportation incidents.

So, what does all this mean?

It means that employee safety is a significant problem in the construction industry.

Perhaps there are too many employers out there that are either
a.) not aware of some of the OSHA standards governing their industry, or
b.) are aware of the standards and just do not take the necessary precautions to comply.

The OSHA website at www.osha.gov provides a wealth of information, but companies in the construction industry need not fend for themselves. They can hire construction law experts with OSHA experience.

If your company has experienced in a jobsite accident or received an OSHA citation, be sure to pay special attention to the various tight deadlines. Missing a deadline can be catastrophic.

Sources:
www.osha.gov
www.cnbc.com
www.MSDSonline.com