Stratford Contractor Exposed Employees to Long Falls, Electrocution Hazards: OSHA

A Stratford construction company faces fines of more than $48,000 after OSHA found that four of its employees faced falls of up to 26 feet without proper fall protection and also faced electrocution hazards during a roofing job.

OSHA announced that it cited Whole Life Construction LlC, 306 Bird Circle, Stratford, Connecticut on Jan. 21 for repeat and two serious violations of workplace safety standards at a residential roofing job at 121 Anson St. in Bridgeport.

OSHA inspectors found four employees working without fall protection, three atop the roof and one on a scaffold. The employees faced falls of more than 20 feet and 26 feet, respectively.

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OSHA also found that the rooftop employees had not been trained in fall protection. The scaffold was not properly erected and braced and employees were not trained to recognize scaffold hazards.

Employees also faced electrocution hazards while working too close to energized power lines, according to OSHA.

OSHA had previously cited Whole Life Construction for similar hazards at work sites in New Haven and Danbury.

OSHA is proposing penalties of $48,400 and said the company’s latest violations has led it to place Whole Life Construction in the agency’s Severe Violators Enforcement Program. The program focuses on recalcitrant employers that endanger workers by committing willful, repeat or failure-to-abate violations.

Under the program, OSHA may inspect any of the employer’s facilities if it has reasonable grounds to believe there are similar violations.

“This employer has again deprived its employees of required, life-saving protections,” Robert Kowalski, OSHA’s area director in Bridgeport, said in a statement. “That is unacceptable. Whole Life Construction’s workers risked deadly and disabling injuries from potential falls, scaffold collapse and electrocution. It is the employer’s responsibility to take and maintain effective corrective action and provide its employees with safe working conditions at all its job sites.”

Whole Life Construction has 15 business days from receipt of its citations and penalties to comply, meet with OSHA’s area director, or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

To ask questions, obtain compliance assistance, file a complaint, or report amputations, eye loss, workplace hospitalizations, fatalities or situations posing imminent danger to workers, the public should call OSHA’s toll-free hotline at 800-321-OSHA (6742) or the agency’s Bridgeport Area Office at 203-579-5581.