A New York home-improvements contractor with a history of employee-safety violations is facing another eight charges and a fine of more than $685,000, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is reporting.
The department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited ALJ Home Improvement Inc. of Nanuet, New York with four willful and four serious violations and advised a $687,536 penalty for "lack of fall and head protection and violations of multiple standards," the DOL announced Feb. 3.
In August 2022, an OSHA inspector visited a worksite where ALJ had been contracted to do roofing removal and re-installation of new materials. The inspector witnessed three workers on an 18-foot-high roof without required fall protection, the statement reports. The infractions occurred after the company had already been cited for 33 safety violations in seven inspections in the past four years, and the workplace deaths of two employees in falls, one in 2019 and the second in 2022, OSHA reports.
“Since 2019, two employees of ALJ Home Improvement have suffered fatal falls and ALJ continues to callously ignore the law and blatantly jeopardize the safety of its workers,” OSHA Area Director Lisa Levy said in the report. “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."
ALJ Home Improvement Inc., operating in Rockland, Orange, Westchester and Dutchess counties in New York and Bergen County in New Jersey, has 15 business days to respond after receiving the citations by either complying, requesting a meeting with an area OSHA director or refuting the charges before an independent OSHA review commission.
"The reality is," Levy said in the report, "that a safe workplace is actually a more profitable workplace.”
