Roofing Contractor Fined for Ignoring Warnings to Protect Workers Even After Two Deaths From Falls

By Mindy Cohn

The U.S. Department of Labor has fined ALJ Home Improvement Inc $687,000 in additional fines after the company continued to ignore warnings to protect workers following the death of two roofers who died after falling while working, as reported by Rockland Daily here.

The Nanuet-based roofing contractor is active in Rockland, Orange, Westchester, and Dutchess counties in New York and Bergen County in New Jersey. The company already owes $1.3 million in unpaid fines from 2022. This brings the company's fines to nearly $2 million. 

The first employee died in February 2019 after falling at a Kiamesha Lake work site in Thompson in Sullivan County. The roofers were subsequently fined after a second worker fell to his death from the roof of a three-story Spring Valley construction project on February 8, 2022. 

Over the course of the last four years, ALJ received 33 violations plus eight more violations received recently from the department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, bringing an additional $687,536 fine for lack of fall and head protection for workers and violations of other standards.