Safety People- You Might Not Always Like Us, But You Need Us - UPDATE

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote this post about the lack of fall protection on reroofing job in my neighborhood. Fast forward to last week. My boss and I were attending our state's safety conference. After one of the sessions a guy comes up to us and says "You all are from X (city name?)"  (Our location was printed on our name tags). We confirmed that we were. He said "I'm an OSHA compliance offer and I work from my home in Z county" (two counties over from us). At this point my boss and I neither one really want to talk to him anymore. Let's face it, no one WANTS an OSHA inspection. He then says "I'm Compliance for Construction. You didn't want to talk to me did you?" He had a great sense of humor about it, and I'm sure he gets that reaction a lot. Since he wasn't the compliance person for our industry, we chatted. In the course of the conversation it was revealed that he'd been sent out to inspect the roofers based on the anonymous compliant I'd filed with my pictures.

Here's a copy of my e-mail to OSHA:

Mike,

Here are the pictures I promised.

Summary of info:

Photos taken 3/17/11 about 5:30 PM

Location: XXX Building owned by (My City) Housing Authority XXX-XXX-XXXX. Building is on (My Street) near the intersection of Main ST.

Contractor: (Unsafe Roofer Company Name)

I later saw them working on the very top of the building, at least 35' above the ground. They also were still working at 8:30 last night in the dark with no additional lights. This whole situation is EXTREMELY dangerous. I appreicate your looking into this matter, and I would like to be informed of any actions taken if at all possible.

Thank you.

The result of the inspection? The company was fined $18,000. They even told the inspector that a lady had been out taking pictures and said she was going to call OSHA! And yet they never protected their people properly. Duh! The OSHA person also said another compliance officer cited the same company again later for similar issues to the tune of $42,000. Hopefully they've gotten the message.

This goes to show that a picture can be worth a thousand words. In my case, each picture was worth $3000.