Legal Insights
White Paper Calls for OSHA Safety Changes
Trent Cotney discusses a new white paper on OSHA’s mutli-employer doctrine, and how changes can improve safety.
The effort to improve safety on roofing jobsites is ongoing and remains a challenge industrywide. How safety rules are enforced and how contractors react is also an evolving process. Advocates for fairer and more effective safety rules are taking a stand behind a newly-released white paper by the National Construction Policy Institute.
W&C Legal Insights Expert Trent Cotney was among those representing the interests of contractors in the white paper’s development and talked about it in this exclusive videochat.
Inside NCPI's First White Paper
Policymakers and the courts have disagreed for years on the fairness and enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s use of the multi-employer doctrine when it comes to safety violations found on a jobsite. Now, advocates for the construction and roofing trades are pushing for a series of statutory reforms that allow prime contractors on a site to help subcontractors with safety.
“The goal of the NCPI is to put forth good policy recommendations for changes in construction, whether it be labor, immigration, contracts,” said Cotney, partner with Adams & Reese. “One of the things that really started this conversation was OSHA's multi-employer Citation Doctrine.”
Cotney explained it’s something he’s always had concerns over because it allows employers who create, expose, correct, or control a hazard on a site to be cited, even if their own workers weren't directly involved.Looking for a reprint of this article?
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