trade-off in exposure would be for our industry as a whole. It is sufficient to note that a rigid interpretation of the regulations in their present form is not a significant attack on the problem at hand. Regressive nature of cost increases Simple geometry and economics will place the heaviest financial burden for this protection on those property owners least able to pay. The perimeter of a large roof covering a factory is relatively small as a percentage of total roof area. On the other hand, the perimeter of a small home is proportionately huge by comparison. Placed in economic terms, perimeter guarding for a large commercial or industrial building will likely increase costs 10-20%. For a simple reroofing of a small residence, cost increases will likely amount to 50-200%. This wide range is caused by the great number of variables involved including height of roof, extent of repair or replacement necessary to the roof, shrubs and flowers in the way of scaffolding, and a number of other factor. It is not at all unreasonble or sensationalistic to predict a doubling of the cost of reroofing to the average homeowner. This is an onerous and unreasonable burden to the low-income homeowner, the person most likely to need reroofing. Additionally, responsible contractors who try to comply with the regulations will be grossly underbid by the unscrupulous operator who will disregard all safety regulations in giving estimates. This will hit especially hard on the smaller contractor in our industry. Enforcement difficulties There are literally thousands of fly-by-night roofing contractors in the country. One-half of all the roofing and sheet metal contractors in the country have less than four employees. An army of compliance officers would be necessary to inspect and control the practices of this group, the group least likely to comply voluntarily with the regulations. The reputable contractor is faced with an impossible dilemma: add the cost of perimeter guarding to his bid, thereby effectively eliminating himself from consideration for contract award, or ignoring the perimeter guarding in hopes there will be no inspection during the course of the job. Causes of falls NRCA has contacted insurance company sources, State workmen's compensation bureaus, the National Safety Council, and other sources in an effort to determine the causes for and effective methods of eliminating falls. To our knowledge, there is no current source for accurate statistical information on the causes of falls in the roofing industry. Industry experience, however, indicates that the great majority of falls result from two major sources: improper use of ladders and inattention on the part of the roofer. NRCA strongly endorses the enforcement of the regulations dealing with ladder safety. Inattention on the part of the roofer has taken two major forms. First, roof holes and openings have been the major contributor to falls in our industry. NRCA strongly endorses the enforcement of the regulations dealing with the covering and guarding of such holes and openings. Second, falls from the perimeter of the building almost invariably occur when the roofer is operating equipment or handling materials and he “forgets" that he is near the edge of the roof. Falls from the roof edge when the roofer “knows" he is working there are almost unknown. PROPOSED CHANGES IN REGULATIONS One and two-story structures should not be covered by these regulations. Additionally, roofers can work safely at pitches greater than 3 inches in 12 inches. Present standard A catch platform shall be installed below the working area of roofs more than 10 feet from the ground to the eaves with a slope greater than 3 inches in 12 inches without a parapet. In width, the platform shall extend 2 feet beyond the projection of the eaves and shall be provided with a guardrail, mid-rail, and toeboard. This provision shall not apply where employees engaged in work upon such roofs are protected by a safety belt attached to a lifeline. Proposed standard All roofs more than 25 feet from the ground, with a slope greater than 6 inches in 12 inches without a parapet, shall be provided with one of the following devices to prevent injury to employees falling off the roof: 1. A catch platform installed at the roof edge. In width, the platform shall extend 2 feet beyond the projection of the eaves and shall be provided with a guardrail, mid-rail, and toeboard. 2. Safety belts and lifelines for all employees. Anchorage for the lifeline should be above the point of operation to a substantial structural member or to securely rigged lines. 3. Safety nets installed in compliance with the provisions of Section 1926.105 of this part. 4. Any other such device which will protect a falling employee from injury. Present standard Every opensided floor or platform 6 feet or more above adjacent floor or ground level shall be guarded by a standard railing . . . on all open sides . . . Proposed standard All roofs more than 25 feet from the ground, with a slope less than 6 inches in 12 inches, without a parapet, shall be provided with a warning line. The warning line shall be placed approximately waist high at a distance of approximately 10 feet from the perimeter of the building. The warning line may be interrupted at hoisting areas and at areas where employees must have access to ladders, stairways, pump outlets, etc. The warning line shall be left in position while work progresses but may be moved in order to complete roofing work at the perimeter of the building. We would be pleased to discuss these matters with you or your staff, and to cooperate with you in developing meaningful standards for our industry. Please let us know how we can work together to reduce the frequency and severity of accidents in our industry. Respectfully, FRED C. GOOD, Executive Manager. Mr. FRED C. GOOD, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, Executive Manager, National Roofing Contractors Association, DEAR MR. GOOD: Your letter of March 31, 1972, to Assistant Secretary Guenther outlined some of the construction standards with which the National Roofing Contractors Association is concerned. The purpose of this letter is to keep you informed as to the status of some of these items. On June 7, 1972, proposed amendments to the scaffold section of Subpart L were published in the Federal Register. A public hearing was held on July 26, 1972, following the receipt of written comments from all interested persons. The Construction Safety Advisory Committee will meet on August 30, 1972, to make final recommendations to the Secretary on these and other construction regulations. A notice of the forthcoming meeting will be published in the Federal Register. The Construction Division of the Office of Standards considers all suggestions and proposals regarding the construction standards. Most of them require considerable research and study. We welcome the views of persons like yourself, and the Association you represent, and assure you of our continuing evaluation of the standards with the purpose of improving existing and developing new standards. Thank you for your interest in safety and for sharing your views with us. GERARD F. SCANNELL, Director, Office of Standards. Mr. MARTIN. I have tried to outline in this statement what I believe is the core issue behind all of the complaints that I am aware of from our own industry, and the great majority of complaints, it seems to me, from most other industries. There are other issues mentioned, such as the compliance activity, and there are words thrown around such as "gestapo techniques" of compliance officers, but I don't believe these are really the central problems. The central problem is that the standards themselves are unnecessarily complex and unnecessarily burdensome and they are applied much more broadly than they were intended to when they were written. These consensus standards, which supply the bulk of the background for the standards in existence right now were written, as was pointed out just now, by responses from specific industries involved. These standards are, therefore, narrowly conceived to apply to certain very specific sets of circumstances. The Department of Labor has taken these rather narrowly conceived standards and treated them as though they were to be applied absolutely across the entire fabric of the America industrial society, and this is not the way they were intended. There were unfortunately-and I am a little ashamed of this—no formal codified safety standards for our industry. This is certainly not something I am proud of, but nevertheless it was a fact. Now we find ourselves covered by a mass of regulations, none of which was conceived to cover the roofing industry and I outline briefly a few examples in my prepared testimony. The standards conceived with other conditions in mind and now applied to the roofing industry just do not fit the conditions that actually exist Mr. DANIELS. Have you brought that matter to the attention of the Secretary of Labor? Mr. MARTIN. Yes, we have. Mr. DANIELS. Have you met with the Secretary and discussed it with him? Mr. MARTIN. Yes, we have. We are also working on an ANSI standard that will cover the roofing industry. There are gaps in the OSHA standards right now and we have the first draft roofing standard complete now. We anticipate pushing that through in the next few months' time. We find ourselves, though, with one standard which is particularly onerous to our members. This standard requires essentially a heavy fence to be built around all roofs before work on the roof can begin. Certainly we recognize and we have run numerous surveys which show that people do fall off roofs. This is definitely a hazard within our industry. Our members, however, resent this kind of a blanket, mindless application of this standard as being the solution to the problem. Certainly there are additional hazards created because people have to go up on the roof and build this guard rail around the outside of the roof and in some cases where a particular job might be very short in duration or very simple, the increase in hazards to the people that have to build these guard rails might exceed the amount of protection provided to the workmen. We have not been able to convince the Department of Labor that we would sincerely like to sit down with them and try to arrive at some kind of a reasonable alternative to this regulation. We are constantly characterized, not openly, but the constant implication is that we are the bad guys who wear black hats and our members like nothing better than to see their employees falling off the roof. That is patently ridiculous, but we find ourselves in this adversary position constantly. Mr. DANIELS. Do you have a specific recommendation on this! Mr. MARTIN. We made a specific recommendation at a hearing on a related standard which was up for revision as a result primarily of the activity of the National Association of Home Builders, and that particular standard applies only to roofs that are steep roofs, residential-type roofs. And at that time we suggested that the associations involved, which would be NHB, ourselves, NIOSH and OSHA, sit down together and, if necessary, fund research and we would be happy to use our association funds in cooperation with the Government for this, to try to establish on a factual basis what the nature of the problem is, the alternatives, and what is the least expensive method of arriving at maximum safety for the workmen. Like all of our communications with the Government, the idea was advanced at the hearing that I attended and we have heard absolutely nothing. It just sort of goes off to a big void. I mentioned in my testimony before the House Subcommittee on Small Business that as a target industry our experience has been, I think, somewhat frightening in terms of what other industries must be going through. We were told we would receive the complete cooperation of the Government. There has been not a lack of cooperation: there simply has been no communication back and forth whatsoever. We are pushed off and said, "You guys are out there and we are in here and we are going to go ahead and do what we want." Basically this is the impression that I get. I would like to move on to my recommendations because I do sincerely feel that this would take off a lot of the pressure I think Congress has been under from employers of all sizes. First, I would like to agree with Mr. Taylor that any exemption by size is ridiculous. It is a copout. It is not really addressing ourselves to the problem. Secondly, I think that Congress should require the condensation and simplification of the standards. We find it very hard to understand why, if the Government is interested in voluntary compliance, voluntary compliance is made so difficult. The volume of regulations, I think, is well known by everyone and certainly no small businessman in our industry has the time to sit down and literally spend the weeks that would be necessary to dig through these regulations and dig out what does and does not apply to his business. I have been spending almost double time on this for 11 years just to attempt to do this for our members. I don't know what contractors that are not members of our association are doing. The third recommendation is to require that the ANSI standards be applied only to the operations or machinery or practices for which they were intended and require the Administration to prove the need for their application and their practicality in other areas. Where there are gaps in the ANSI standards, where they do not apply to certain operations or conditions such as our industry, I think that the Government can use force, if necessary, to develop standards so that they will apply. I am not, I found out after I wrote this testimony, alone in this opinion. The most current issue of "Safety Standards" magazine published by the Department of Labor, contains an interview with the president of the National Safety Council and I certainly don't think his dedication to safety can be questioned. Let's face it. Some standards are not applicable to all conditions. Recognition of this fact must be given by those who are charged with enforcing the standards and this requires a safety professional who can recognize the exposure hazards intended to be covered by a given standard and determine whether or not such standard was intended to cover the exposure under the given set of circumstances. To attempt to apply standards to every set of conditions means misapplying the intent of the standards and this tends to alienate those who are required to abide by the standards. I agree entirely. I believe it is unfair to expect the compliance officer to have to arrive at some kind of an omniscient understanding of all the safety hazards of every particular industry in this country. It is certainly not a task that I think is a humanly manageable thing. I agree with Mr. Taylor also on balance. In the first period of this law the compliance officers have been doing an incredibly good job with an enormously difficult task. This is not the problem. The problem is in the standards themselves. No. 4 Require that future modifications, additions, or deletions of ANSI standards be followed in the Federal regulations, unless the administration can actively show that there is a need for varying from the consensus of the industry involved. No. 5 Require that the Administration identify in specific numerical terms the frequency of given types of accidents, the costs of these accidents, and the cost of complying with any proposed standard which deals with the causes of these accidents. On this recommendation I think certainly any rational man would want the standards to be tied to prevention of accidents. There is no need to have standards business must comply with where there are no accidents, and I think in the case of standards we have right now that any given business would find 90 percent-I am pulling a number out of the air of the standards now do not address themselves to problems they actually have. Now, they may have conditions in their plant which make these standards applicable because they have been written in such a broad sense, but I think it is turning us away from the business at hand to have the businessman look at this enormous volume of standards rather than saying "Let's start out with the accidents that we have and if standards are necessary, let's write the standards. If there are standards already, let's invoke the standards," and I certainly think this is particularly true of people such as roofing contractors that I represent that have only one or two or three people in the office, and certainly it is unreasonable, I think, to ask them to try to dig through this maze of material. I think that concludes our presentation. Mr. DANIELS. Mr. Martin, thank you very much. I think your testimony will be very, very helpful and I will bring this to the attention. of the Secretary. Perhaps my distinguished colleague here will use his influence, too, with the Secretary to see that some attention is paid to it. Congress will have to take some action along this line. I have no questions. Mr. Steiger? Mr. STEIGER. I would be interested in the kind of roofs that your companies are involved with. |