OSHA

There are new rules starting in June. Everyone must be tied off with rope & harness on any residential roofing job. Does anyone else see this as a problem with a full crew (5+) roofers on a full tear off.

It would seem that the only people OSHA bothers are those with a name on the truck. We make easy targets. We are registered, insured, as well as licensed for the job. We are uneasy BIG target for the bureaucrat's.

Welfare...Where do I sign up? I am tired of working for a living!

roofmaster Said: [quote/

Funny you should mention a 4/12 pitch. You can utilize a safety monitor on 4/12 and less so you dont need the lanyards and harnesses. However, the safety monitor cannot be doing anything but monitoring everyone. Frankly, I believe that OSHA has really overdone it with this one![/quote]

Won't the obvious solution be to get another $60/ day "Sub-Contractor" or his Seester up there as safety monitor?

Ultimately, this is intended to get the Anglo American, off the roof and onto the couch and in line for welfare.

Connect the dots

roofer Said: http://www.osha.gov/doc/residential_fall_protection.html

June 16th it takes effect. Bob from OSHA informed me after we recently were fined on a 4/12 ranch.

Funny you should mention a 4/12 pitch. You can utilize a "safety monitor" on 4/12 and less so you don't need the lanyards and harnesses. However, the safety monitor cannot be doing anything but monitoring everyone. Frankly, I believe that OSHA has really overdone it with this one!

I'm looking at this and cannot find anywhere in the regs where it would apply to reroofing. It refers to new construction every where not repairing or reroofing. B) B) :) :) B) B) Deep Down In Florida Where The Sun Shines Damn Near Every Day

A couple of days ago a radio news commentator announced that an untrained hispanic worker fell from a four-story building and died. It was an apartment building (residential, therefore) and he had no safety equipment and the company had no safety program. The commentator went on to say "this is why osha is going to be cracking down to the full extent of the law."

Soldierboy reported that a worker went through a skylight and fell forty feet to his death.

Accidents like these belong to a completely different category than what this legal change is concerned with.

A lot of buzz and nothing real. This type of site condition is already handled.

The sheer amount of technical and financial obligation imposed by this development on legitimate contractors doing extremely low-risk projects is grossly disproportionate to the dollars and injuries saved, if there even would be any. Anyone in the lay category or the fly-by night category is likely to put injury incidents into this "risk category" regardless of any of this regulation. Therefore rates won't be going up for that reason. They may go up for other reasons, but not for that. Sensible contractors are not going to contribute more losses either way. Insensible contractors are merely going to be replaced by new insensible contractors. The numbers do not work. This law will not tangibly affect the loss column and the ones creating the losses will not adhere to it anyway. There is a perfectly logical axiom to describe my objections: the punishment has to fit the crime. Levying the proposed fines on competent contractors is just a way to pretend to social responsibility while picking the low-hanging fruit of revenue enhancement for pseudo-cops. It does no good to use a bigger hammer if you aren't hitting the nail.

This widens the gap between the legits and the fly-by-nighters. Not very encouraging.

If this were going to weed out the fly-by-nights I'd be all for it.

Oh Lanny I have heard that before. OS sorry for usuing you as example. You won the nailing contest. Congrats by the way. The trade of roofing is in your blood, transfered from generation to generation, your appreciation of the trade is quite obvious. That applies to others on here also, please don't feel left out. I just can't name you all. The point being regardless of the trade, you want to do well on the project and also well financially, it's a struggle because the commoner (me & others) want to go cheap. Most of us homeowners go cheap and learn an expensive lesson. When you respect a trade you also respect safety. I have learned over the years to not go cheap, in fact I just bought a new front door for my house replacing the original 36 yr old one. Long overdue , I didn't know a door could cost so much. Anyway, regulations are regulations, deal with it the best you can. Maybe this can help weed out some of the fly by nights. Keep up the good work guys/women. PC

---The law is much more than just nanny state Bureaucracy. The law is more about money. In our state the accident claims in all catagories has exceeded the pool of funds paid by all employers. In fact, just last week the state legislature changed or modified the way claims are paid. ---It was reported that long term disability costs around 85% of the claims paid. The proposal to allow lump sum payments was passed in some form. That has saved other states money over the long term. ---Because roofing has such a high rate of accidents which require long term disability payments the industry has been studied. Rules were put forth to address the industry's track record. ---It is also a fact that brain injuries costing over 1 million dollars can occur from a fall of 6 feet or above. Even falling off a bicycle without a helmet on concrete can cause a brain injury costing that amount. These are statistics that have been tabulated. Thus, rules have been put forth based upon those statistics. ---Whether we in the roofing industry like it or not the gov't is really trying to lower the accident rate which will save us all money in worker's comp. payments in the long run. ---I am currently paying $5.75 per man hour in worker's comp. I am not looking forward to that amount increasing. It only makes it harder to compete with those working under the table. ---Most of the companies I know have a company safety plan and that was long before OSHA came along. You violate the safety rules and you are fired on the spot because you put the compnay at risk. ---We have always had the rule, "If you fall off the roof, you are fired before you hit the ground." Lanny

egg...didn't legal marijuana fail in CA when the feds stepped in, as jim mentioned?

And BTW, I grew up in a time when the European economies were ridiculed for the same ridiculous overbearing crap that we think we have invented, since of course we are the greatest country, surely we did invent stupidity and now proudly take credit for it. Since of course, we are the greatest.

(Unless China says otherwise)

Whenever anything goes to court there is no telling where it will end up. For the foreseeable future we need not fear those bloated citations. For anyone still working that is a tangible and significant victory. But with such an opponent any victory no matter how small is a worthy victory.

egg Said: After many years of suffering ridicule from people scattered throughout the other states in this country because we are perceived in Cal to be always at the vanguard of restrictive legislation, I can proclaim that I am ecstatic to be doing business here right now. Cal-Osha has made this the only state in the entire country where a self-respecting, safety-conscious roofing contractor is still allowed to use slide guards. But dont despair. Even though my outrage at this law is no longer being fueled by daily and hourly fury, I am still ready and willing to advocate for all the rest of you in the country who are quite obviously being grotesquely abused by a handful of obsessive, perfectionist, and illogical zealots. Dont think you can get a fire-sale price on my gear though. We use that stuff. [size=4](Where it is logical, reasonable, and necessary.)[/size]

Odd, the fed regulation specifically says the opposite.

Your small victory will be short-lived when the lawyers find their first case and haul it into federal court on appeal.

After many years of suffering ridicule from people scattered throughout the other states in this country because we are perceived in Cal to be always at the vanguard of restrictive legislation, I can proclaim that I am ecstatic to be doing business here right now. Cal-Osha has made this the only state in the entire country where a self-respecting, safety-conscious roofing contractor is still allowed to use slide guards. But don't despair. Even though my outrage at this law is no longer being fueled by daily and hourly fury, I am still ready and willing to advocate for all the rest of you in the country who are quite obviously being grotesquely abused by a handful of obsessive, perfectionist, and illogical zealots. Don't think you can get a fire-sale price on my gear though. We use that stuff. [size=4](Where it is logical, reasonable, and necessary.)[/size]

The only hope is to not fight it. Instead DEMAND that the government enforce the same rules uniformly to the public and accept the violations that it allows. All childrens' playground equipment should be lower than 6'. Any hiking trail that allows unhooked people within 6' of a dropoff should be closed. You want front row skybox seats? You could get excited and fall over the rail, so first put on your harness and lanyard. That Presidential box at the Kennedy center has a pretty big dropoff, we better have BO and the Mrs in harnesses next time they go there. Only when everyone experiences how ridiculous it is will it ever go away.