Efforts to improve safety on roofing construction sites are ongoing and remain a challenge across the industry. The way safety regulations are enforced and how roofers respond to them is also an evolving process. Advocates for fairer and more effective safety regulations are weighing in on a newly released white paper from the National Construction Policy Institute (NCPI).
Rethink OSHA rules for safer construction sites
Policymakers and courts have disagreed for years about whether the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) application of the multi-employer doctrine is justified and enforceable when it comes to safety violations on a construction site. Now, advocates for the construction and roofing trades are pushing for a series of legal reforms that would allow main contractors on a construction site to help subcontractors stay safe.
RC Legal Insights expert Trent Cotney, among others, represented the interests of roofers and other contractors in the development of the white paper and spoke about it in this exclusive video chat.
“The goal of the NCPI is to provide good policy recommendations for change in construction, whether in the areas of labor, immigration or contracts,” said Cotney, a partner at Adams & Reese. “One of the things that really sparked this conversation was OSHA’s multiemployer citation doctrine.”
Cotney said it's something he's always been concerned about because it gives employers who create, detect, correct or control a hazard on a construction site the opportunity to be cited, even if their own workers aren't directly involved.
Watch the full conversation here.