New Jersey Roofers Pay OSHA $155,000 in Fall Safety Settlement

A New Jersey-based roofing company agreed to pay $155,000 in penalties to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to settle numerous workplace safety violation citations, the agency announced Monday.

RRC Home Improvement Inc. affirmed the violations and agreed to bolster safety measures, providing OSHA, which is part of the US Department of Labor, with site-specific fall protection plans as part of the settlement, the agency said.

It was not the first time RRC Home Improvement has faced scrutiny over its workplace safety practices. The Newark-based roofing contractor is part of an OSHA program for companies with several such violations on their records.

OSHA initially fined the company $328,000 in December, citing issues that resulted in four willful and seven serious safety violations. RRC Home Improvement contested the agency’s findings, OSHA records show.

The agency investigated the company earlier, in the summer of 2024, after receiving reports that employees were working on a roof without fall protection. When OSHA inspectors visited RRC worksites in July of that year, they observed workers without these protections and noted other workplace safety violations, including “lack of hard hats, eye protection, and fire extinguishers, as well as non-compliant pump jack scaffold poles and unsafe ladder use,” OSHA said.

The company received multiple OSHA citations since 2017, the agency said in a December statement, and was added to the agency’s Severe Violator Enforcement Program for employers that have “demonstrated indifference to their OSH Act obligations by committing willful, repeated, or failure-to-abate violations.”

The company was also sued in state court in 2020 by an employee of a different contractor who alleged that he was paralyzed after being struck by falling building materials while helping RRC employees operate a platform hoist on a worksite.

An RRC Home Improvement representative declined to comment.