Why Do Roofers Do This?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Falls are the number two cause of fatalities in the workplace, behind vehicular collisions.

As I understand it, OSHA throughout the US requires tie off at 6’ for all construction operations. The company I work for, which does several billion dollars worth of business a year in Canada and the US, uses this as our company-wide standard, although some jurisdictions, like here in Alberta, have less stringent requirements (we’re at 3m for fall protection requirements). We figure if Americans are clever enough to figure out how to make that work, surely all the Canadians are too. :smiley:

But, of course, roofers are still bad for behaving themselves, even when all this is clearly explained to them before they step onto one of our sites. Two weeks ago, on a big commercial project I’m working on, where we are re-roofing a 40-year-old med sciences structure, our superintendent spotted three roofers working 8’ up on a pile of roofing material without their harnesses. He immediately called them down to suspend them for the remainder of the day and the next (as per our disciplinary policy for such violations) and discovered that they not only hadn’t been tied off, but that they also hadn’t generated a job procedure for high risk work, a fall protection plan, or even a hazard assessment, all of which are legal requirements for the work at heights they were doing. The punchline – among the three guys misbehaving was the crew’s foreman. Morons.

We’ve had one lost time injury since I moved to that project in June. A roofer climbing out of a garbage bin and jumping down, rather than taking the extra six seconds to use the ladder. He landed awkwardly and blew up his knee, requiring surgery to repair the damage. Moron.

As to the bullshit argument that the safety gear slows you down, I can only say this: the company I work for has been in business since 1906 and, in a century of careful statistical analysis, we’ve determined that a worker who conducts himself safely, using all the safety measures we and the legislation requires, is more productive than a worker who is lying on a stretcher in the hospital or a slab in the morgue.

42

Piece work.

That’s how they get paid and if you want to eat you have to go fast.

I did this for about 3 years when I was young and if you’re not union you’re not getting paid much per square (100 square feet).

I consistently did 10 squares a day and made $12 per square. 10 squares is rocking it and if you couldn’t do 8 there was no point in being there so 8 - 10 is pretty average range for a roofer. A union guy made $1000 per week whatever he did.

We were once put on a large residential pseudo government project and worked for nearly a year breaking every possible safety rule before someone questioned not how we were working but how much we were making. They about flipped when they found out we were paid piece. Someone from the government had to figure out how much we should have been paid by expected rates of productivity and we ended up getting an extra $1800 check for each of the previous weeks worked. That check took a couple years to come in or we all would have quit the next day.

In other words our productivity had been about 2 1/2 times greater than union guys following safety rules and we had had to do that to earn just 60% of what they earned.

I had two falls from 2 stories or more. If you’re laid up you’re not nailing shingles and you’re not getting paid. That’s it. Falls from 1 story don’t warrant any work stoppage. There was no Workmens Comp, everyone was an independent contractor, although we would do extra each day to get a guy that was hurt some money.

You know within a second if a slip is an out of control one or not and you start looking for a solution fast. Failing finding anything to grab you drive the claw of your hammer through the deck and yell. The gutter is your last shot but they don’t hold very well.

The scariest part was really getting on and off the ladder at the top. I don’t know why and I don’t know if other guys felt this way but it always scared the shit out of me.

We also got paid piece for putting on tarpaper (less staples is faster but more dangerous), for putting on drip edge, and occasionally for stacking the roof.

It was also the most violent construction environment I worked in.

This is a brutal way to make a living and turnover was very high. Injuries, aging out of high productivity, fear and fatique make for a generally short career. If a new guy showed up and was just afraid he wasn’t laughed at or dogged he just went home. Better to have a scared guy off the deck. I know we would sometimes watch them leave with a wistful expression on our faces and then get back to work.

Summertime on a black roof it gets to about 130 degrees and takes your breathe away but you have to keep up your speed. In the winter we would sometimes have a laborer go up at 5 AM to clear our 10 squares each of snow and ice so we could work. This was so dangerous and so rude he got to go home then and still got paid for the day. I finally quit because I just couldn’t take the cold anymore. Hershey Pennsylvania in February is not for the weak.

The guys you see are trying to make a living. Putting safety gear on them and scaffolding under them means they will no longer make a living wage while still having to deal with the misery and time pressure The alternative is to hire unions and follow all the OSHA rules but unfortunately we could only afford to live in sheds.

Don’t judge them. Figure out if you have a part in our society that demands this and accept it or change it.

43

My dad is a career roofer and owns his own small roofing company. I worked summers for him growing up, so I can say…

The men were told to follow all safety regulations, but dad would turn a blind eye so that jobs could get done quickly.

Men are paid piecework; abiding by all the safety regulations and requirements just means they make less money. That’s how they see it.

OSHA got on my dad’s ass at least once over violations, and he ramped up required safety meetings and stuff, and then got on the men to actually follow safety procedures.

On very steep/dangerous roofs, the men are sometimes paid hourly or the piece rate is much higher, so that they can follow safety regulations and work carefully.

Over time, my dad has been definitely more concerned with safety and tries his best to bid dangerous jobs so that he can pay his men more… but roofing is a cutthroat industry, and typically, people just go with the cheapest bid that they can get.

So bottomline is, dad can only pay his men so much because he can only bid a job so high before he bids himself out of a contract. It sucks.

I would also like to say that the employees my dad had were alcoholic, drug users, who were dumb as rocks. But damn could they work really, really hard. It’s incredible how hard roofing is.

44

Don’t judge them? Why the hell not? I call stupid when I see it, and with roofers, I see it. Don’t like it? Too bad.

45

I was in the hospital a few days this summer and one of my roommates was a roofer who’d had a fall and broke both legs – two tibs and femur. Poor dude.

–Cliffy

46

Because if they don’t do that, they can’t make a living wage. Making fun of poor people is not a good thing.

If you don’t want them doing it, then you go out and pay them more money so they won’t have to. Otherwise, you have no right to say anything.

47

If they are not willing to obey the law that is there to protect them from themselves, are not willing to work safely and compensate for the lower income by not blowing their wages on booze and/or drugs, and are not willing to simply change careers, then tought titty. Calling them stupid is not making fun of them. It is calling it like it is.

As far a me paying more for safe roofers, it is not a matter of paying more, it is a matter of not trying to save a buck by hiring unsafe contractors who turn a blind eye to illegallity. When our building was re-roofed, we took care to hire a general whom we knew ensured that his subs worked safely. The only general contractors whom I represent have safe workplaces, and most notably, I have never represented roofers but I have acted against roofing companies.

48

Safety harness is a mixed blessing. The ropes are a trip hazard. If you do fall you can still get hurt. 1. you can swing violently on the rope and crash into the wall. 2. the sudden jerk when the rope goes tight can snap your neck or back. 3. ropes too long and you still hit the ground.

I made money for college by roofing in the summer. It’s very dangerous, dirty work. I’ve done hot-tar-and-gravel roofs with an old fashioned kettle and I’ve pounded shingles. Never want to do it again. I hired a contractor to roof my house a few years ago.

49

My neighbor is a roofer, has been forever and never, ever wears a harness, or goggles or gloves either for that matter. Of course, that one time he fell he was out of work for a long time but he didn’t start using a harness afterward.

Setting up a harness system would take a lot of time and trying to work on a roof with ropes and straps underfoot sounds like it would be pretty dangerous too. It’s not like a roofer just stands in one place the whole time.

50

Oh FUCK! We finally managed to convince the French that Spain is not in Africa, and now that we’re in the EU (and in the Eurozone!) I discover we’re in Asia? Damnit! My geography teachers blew goats!

I’ve noticed a lot of commonality between seatbelt idiocy and love of telling me how to live my life, though, so I’m reasonably confident that we can file both groups under M for machista.

My brother works as a construction foreman. I can locate him easily because way too often he’s the only man onsite to have his hardhat on (if there is a second hardhat around, it’s worn by a “technical architect” or safety officer, two professions which are overwhelmingly female hereabouts).

51

My comments:

If you have a major swing potential, you haven’t set your rope line and grab up properly

See 1. Also, rope grab systems are typically designed for use as fall restraint, not fall arrest, which means the system should restrain you from even taking a fall off the roof, so a sudden jerk shouldn’t even be possible. If you have set the system up for fall arrest, if you’ve set things up correctly, the system is designed to protect the wearer from a 4’ fall – there should be no sudden jerk serious enough to injure in a 4’ fall. Again, if you’re fall drops you far enough to create sufficient force to do serious damage, you haven’t set things up properly.

As with 1. and 2., If you have set your system up correctly, there should be no way to hit the ground. If you’ve done a sloppy job with the fall protection such that you’ll bounce off the ground before it even engages, well, that’s a hint that you didn’t do things right.

As to the piece work issue, I recognize that it’s a major issue in the States. It is far less the case in Canada, IME. My company, for example, won’t even accept bids from companies that pay their labour by the piece, because we’ve been down that road and know full well how cheap lives are in those companies. If you can’t do right by your employees, don’t bother calling us, because it won’t be worth the time and effort for either of us.

Ultimately, though, I have to agree with Muffin - if you willfully choose not to do what is minimally required by the legislation to protect yourself, you’re stupid, and sooner or later, you’ll be taking yourself out of the gene pool one way or another. Just please don’t do it on my site; I hate doing all that extra incident investigation paperwork.

52

I’ll concede that they might not be the ‘sharpest knife in the drawer’, but I think that you’re being unduly harsh, if not downright unfair in labeling them ‘stupid’.
Especially, without knowing anything about them. For all you know, there could be numerous mitigating factors that have contributed to their present situation and choice of career.

(And it’s ‘tough titty’, not ‘tought titty’.)

(I’m going to refrain from asking if you have any compassion for those less fortunate than yourself.)

53

Even a few weeks of working in Orthopedic Surgery will profoundly change one’s opinion regarding common everyday activities - roofing and snow blowing for two.

The white board outside the surgery wing would list the day’s schedule. Usually it would be quite specific - Total Knee Replacement, Appendix, whatever. My favorite was the chilling phrase “Snow Blower”, the implication being that someone had gotten their snow blower clogged, and had stuck their hand in to unclog it, and spread finger bits across the driveway, and it was just to damn complicated to try to delineate all the laceration, fractures and missing digits on a white board.

54

Years ago I had a roofer for a roommate, and from what I gathered a case of beer was a regular part of a roofer’s “equipment”.

Of course, he was fired more than once for drinking on the job.

55

A few years back in Madison they passed an ordinance outlawing trains from blowing their whistles as they approached intersections, because residents were complaining and several tracks pass through or near the downtown area. In the next two years five local people were killed at rail crossings, and the city council repealed the law. And, all the tracks crossings have lights and bells and most of them have barriers.

56

The old “You don’t know me” justification. Colour me impressed.