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NYC CRACK DOWN

No mention of OSHA. At a pre-job meeting that I attended each contractor spoke for a few minutes. Each engineer spoke for a few minutes. Then the safety manager got started. Thirty minutes later he was going strong. He knew the fine associated with every violation....but he was not a CalOSHA officer so he couldn't levy a fine. The fine for a loose powder strip was enormous.....the fine for an expended loose powder strip was large. You could get shot with your own Ramset if it was found out of the box, unattended.
 
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In the main town I take care of we have a jobsite manual that you have to sign for and get a copy of. Everything in the manual is in the ordinance so code enforcement handles all of those violations, not the building department inspectors. You can have your own safety ordinances if someone wants to use the OSHA excuse.
 
Ok, if you google it you can read th3 whole article. Following the link doesn’t work. This is interesting ... how can you justify pushing back? Just follow the rules. And you can ask for a premptive inspection, and they are decent about that.


Based on these visits, 11,484 violations were issued, totaling $15 million in fines. Another 2,523 orders were issued to stop work immediately, some because of dangerous working conditions such as missing guardrails and inadequate safety supervision.

At a handful of sites, an inspector issued a stop-work order after being refused entry for a surprise inspection. Though there has been little public opposition to the surprise inspections, somedevelopers and contractors have said privately that the visits can be a nuisance that disrupts work and leads to unnecessary fines and paperwork for minor infractions.

“I am hearing from property owners and contractors who are getting increasingly frustrated and feel at some point they’re going to have to push back,” said one industry expert, who asked not to be named because he did not want to expose his clients to any repercussions from the city.
 
NYC has had a problem with enforcement of the building code but this article is about worker safety which comes under the jurisdiction of OSHA or a federally approved state program. Thus even if you argue home rule authority for a city to regulate worker safety this enforcement of worker safety by a local jurisdiction would have to be tied back to a Federally approved program dealing with regulation and enforcement..

Without knowing the details of NY law it is not possible to state whether it is legal for the City to enforce occupational safety regulations. Still it is clear that in general local jurisdictions do not have authority to enforce occupational safety regulations. In the case of California there are statutes which make it clear that enforcement of occupational safety is not a building department enforcement concern.
 
Mark is correct, I use The Blue Gavel Training Guides at $339 a year, §1.18 Limits the scope of inspection, §1.19 gives the rules that all inspections must proceed under, §1.20 requires the inspector to provide his credentials, §1.21 goes into the necessity for search warrants under certain circumstances, and §1.22 lays out the rules for the Opening Conference before any inspection can commence. I think I could nail Tiger with all kinds of privacy violations.

I would suggest that any inspector wanting to make OSHA (CalOSHA, whatever) buy the applicable Blue Gavel Guide, we contractors have to buy it so you should too.

The big question is why the Hell do you guys want to do OSHA inspections anyway, don't you have enough to do as it is?
 
The big question is why the Hell do you guys want to do OSHA inspections anyway, don't you have enough to do as it is?

Why would you think that I shouldn’t? It’s free to you. It might prevent an injury or even a death and that’s a problem for you? What exactly would your argument be? You don’t have a civil right to endanger your employees. I have a moral imperative to prevent that.
 
The vigilante mentality. The vigilante starts out trying to correct what they believe to be an injustice and then proceeding to impose his own sense of morality and in the process subverting the rule of law and stepping on the rights of those he abuses. The vigilante rules by fear.

We have a system of laws. If you believe that there is an OSHA violation report it to CalOSHA.
 
People like you take the fun out of it. Don’t get me wrong.....I appreciate that people like you exist for if you didn’t then there wouldn’t be a need for people like me.
 
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The vigilante mentality. The vigilante starts out trying to correct what they believe to be an injustice and then proceeding to impose his own sense of morality and in the process subverting the rule of law and stepping on the rights of those he abuses. The vigilante rules by fear.

We have a system of laws. If you believe that there is an OSHA violation report it to CalOSHA.

This thread is about NYC, NY, not any other city of state. They have their own set of adopted rules and regulations they enforce, including OSHA training for construction personnel. They also have 106 pages of jobsite requirements that they are enforcing, much of which parallels OSHA.
 
Unsafe Conditions effect all those on and around the site.
Crane and wall collapses usually do not happen to the building under construction.
Unsafe conditions can effect the building inspectors as well. unsecured ladders, frayed cords and wires, Energized wires in contact with plumbing, Metal framing, ceiling grids or HVAC systems. all have occurred in my juresdiction.
 
My postings have recognized the reality that there may be nuances to NY's laws but that in general that in most if not all states local jurisdictions have no authority to enforce occupational safety laws. This conclusion follows directly from US Supreme Court rulings. Building officials and local jurisdictions need to realize that there are limits on what they can do.

While the original posting was about NYC it is clear that some individuals not in NYC think that they too can enforce occupational safety. States and by extension local jurisdictions can only adopt and enforce occupational safety laws if their plan has been approved by the Secretary of Labor.

I believe that there should be a recognition that building officials and inspectors can only enforce laws, including building regulations, that were properly adopted.

I have no problem with there being occupational safety laws but my point is that building officials and inspectors cannot enforce them except in a way acceptable to OSHA. This is because of federal preemption.

The fact that there are what some see as unsafe conditions does not empower individuals to act as vigilantes. What is a safety problem is generally subjective so what you may consider unsafe others may not. The way we have decided to resolve these differences of opinion is by adopting regulations defining what is unacceptable or acceptable. It is unacceptable for a government employee to substitute his or her idea as to what is unsafe in place of the adopted regulations.

By the way it would appear that energized wires in contact with plumbing would be an electrical code violation that the building department could address and thus is not relevant to this discussion.
 
... not relevant to this discussion.
Not true, everything is Relevant for discussion.
It was not posted to only discuss OSHA issues, I posted it for Open Discussion, That what this forum is for, Open Discussion. If you want closed discussions the ICC website is waiting for your input.
 
The real issue here is building inspectors exceeding their authority, and what should be done about it. CalOSHA has some pretty stiff penalties if their procedures are not followed. I've had to take training classes on this, been fined $50 one time in 1971 for running out of toilet paper in the PortaPotty.
 
The real issue here is building inspectors exceeding their authority, and what should be done about it. CalOSHA has some pretty stiff penalties if their procedures are not followed. I've had to take training classes on this, been fined $50 one time in 1971 for running out of toilet paper in the PortaPotty.
If you had good attention to detail and management skills, you would not have run out of toilet paper.
 
Good business skills and you would of back-charged the company providing and servicing the shack.

I did.

The one OSHA requirement that I've refused to obey is the prohibition against walking plates, walking plates is a fundamental carpentry skill, if you can't walk plates you shouldn't be on a jobsite
 
I did.

walking plates is a fundamental carpentry skill, if you can't walk plates you shouldn't be on a jobsite
That is ridiculous. I know top notch, fat carpenters that would never walk plate. Walking plate is a fundamental skill for the circus.
 
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My postings have recognized the reality that there may be nuances to NY's laws but that in general that in most if not all states local jurisdictions have no authority to enforce occupational safety laws. This conclusion follows directly from US Supreme Court rulings. Building officials and local jurisdictions need to realize that there are limits on what they can do.

While the original posting was about NYC it is clear that some individuals not in NYC think that they too can enforce occupational safety. States and by extension local jurisdictions can only adopt and enforce occupational safety laws if their plan has been approved by the Secretary of Labor.

I believe that there should be a recognition that building officials and inspectors can only enforce laws, including building regulations, that were properly adopted.

I have no problem with there being occupational safety laws but my point is that building officials and inspectors cannot enforce them except in a way acceptable to OSHA. This is because of federal preemption.

The fact that there are what some see as unsafe conditions does not empower individuals to act as vigilantes. What is a safety problem is generally subjective so what you may consider unsafe others may not. The way we have decided to resolve these differences of opinion is by adopting regulations defining what is unacceptable or acceptable. It is unacceptable for a government employee to substitute his or her idea as to what is unsafe in place of the adopted regulations.

By the way it would appear that energized wires in contact with plumbing would be an electrical code violation that the building department could address and thus is not relevant to this discussion.

I've intervened a few dozen times for good reason. There was never a suspicion that there might be some dangerous thing happening. I've had workmen thank me for stopping what was going down. For that you call me a vigilante?
 
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