Over the past five years, federal workplace safety officials inspected about 1,800 roofing contractors in Illinois.

But a CU-CitizenAccess review found no state records that showed that 1,200 of those contractors had the required licenses to operate in Illinois.

In Illinois, it is illegal to perform roofing work without a license, which is regulated by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR). To be licensed, roofing contractors must pass an exam, provide the name and address of a qualifying business and show proof of worker’s compensation insurance for roofing if they have employees.

Licenses establish regulations and lend authority to the roofer, said Chris Slaby, public information officer for IDFPR, in an interview. A license shows the business or contractor is an expert and it helps provide consumer protection, he said.

“We’re doing the best that we can,” Slaby said when asked about the apparent lack of licenses. “To catch unlicensed practice, we really rely on the public.”

The state department currently licenses over 1.2 million professionals, according to its database. Roofing contractors make up about 1.3% of that total, at about 16,000 active licenses.

To help inform the public, the department has a brochure on roofing. If a consumer finds an unlicensed roofing contractor, it also has a form for complaints that can be used to report unlicensed practice and other issues with licensed individuals or businesses.

Because this information helps support the case for a violation, Slaby said it is important for these complaints to be as detailed as possible.

According to the Illinois Roofing Industry Licensing Act, roofing contractors must attach their license number to all contracts, bids and applications for building permits. If they run an advertisement without their name and license number, they are supposed to be charged with a class A misdemeanor and fined $1,000.

Lack of fall protection is the most common safety violation

The state agency also receives complaints from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). From 2020 to 2022, unlicensed roofing practice resulted in disciplinary action in four complaints.

Over the past five years, the administration has conducted about 2,500 inspections on roofing contractors in Illinois, which found about 6,300 violations, according to the OSHA enforcement database.

The most common violation came from a lack of fall protection. The second-most common violation came from a lack of training surrounding fall protection.

“When they say the numbers, roofers are at the top of the list for being non-compliant for fall protection,” Kevin Coleman, training director for Roofers Local 11, said in an interview. “For us roofers, even though we train, fall protection is something we’ve been dealing with for a while now, and for some reason, we just can’t kick it.”

Almost 40 years ago, when Coleman started working in the roofing industry, roofers wanted to just “get up there, do the job, get done, and go home,” he said. Since then, he said the roofing industry has increased its priority on safety training.

As a result, more roofing contractors know how to do their jobs safely, he said. However, not all of these contractors take the time to follow the safety guidelines.

“Because [the industry] is just so competitive out there, the jobs have to get done quicker. So, what do they do? Well, they cut down on safety,” Coleman said. “It’s one way to do things a little faster, unfortunately.”

When roofing companies and workers prioritize money over safety, he said they stop caring if the work hurts people.

“It could be a [roofer’s] first day on a roof, and [the foreman] will tell them to put on a harness, and fit it properly, too,” Coleman said. “But if it doesn’t fit properly, and you happen to fall off the roof, you can fall right out of the thing.”

At Roofers Local 11, Coleman directs the union’s five-year apprenticeship program, which teaches roofers OSHA safety standards and general equipment safety, he said. As part of the program, roofing apprentices meet and learn from OSHA officials.

“The guys get to see who OSHA is and see that they’re not the bad guy,” Coleman said. “All OSHA’s mission is, is trying to make sure people go home safe to their families.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roofing had the second-highest death rate of any civilian profession nationwide in 2023, with 51.8 fatal injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers.

“We wouldn’t need OSHA if there weren’t any deaths,” Coleman said. “Someone has to be out there, policing, if the companies aren’t policing themselves.”

Safety regulations ignored for cost-cutting

When roofing contractors forgo safety regulations, they want to cut costs. However, these savings quickly get erased if OSHA fines the contractor or if an employee suffers an injury, Jim Hadel, international president of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers & Allied Workers, said in an interview.

According to the OSHA website, serious and other-than-serious violations have a maximum penalty of $16,550 per violation. Willful or repeated violations have their upper limit increased by a factor of 10, with a maximum of $165,514 per violation.

Over 2,551 inspections in the past five years, roofing contractors working in Illinois were fined a median of $32,132 for willful violations, $7,000 for repeat violations, $2,600 for serious violations and $325 for other-than-serious violations.

If a safety violation has a substantial probability to cause death or serious harm, it is defined as a serious violation, according to the OSHA Employer Rights and Responsibilities handbook. Other-than-serious violations come from safety violations that likely would not cause death or serious harm, the handbook said.

If the employer is cited for the same safety violation within the past five years, it becomes repeated, the handbook said. Willful violations come when employers show either “an intentional disregard for the requirements of the [Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970] or a plain indifference to employee safety and health,” the handbook said.

Workers’ compensation claims can also significantly cost roofing contractors, Hadel said.

As more workers get injured and file compensation claims, he said the cost of the employers’ insurance plan increases, which can price roofing contractors out of the market.

For roofing workers and businesses, these costs make safety training that much more impactful on their bottom line, Hadel said.

“Some of the guys feel [the training] is repetitive, but it’s a constant reminder that you’re in a very, very dangerous occupation,” Hadel said. “We want you to go home safely, unhurt. And, more importantly, we don’t want to report a fatality to a family member.”

Contractors can dodge workers’ compensation claims

Injuries in the roofing industry tend to be more severe. Lawyers who’ve represented roofers said, typically, the workers have fallen from some height or have not had sufficient safety equipment.

When roofing contractors do get injured, they should seek treatment and then try to find an attorney that specializes in workers’ compensation, Jennifer Eldridge, senior associate at Spiros Law, said in an interview.

“I try to explain to my clients that the insurance companies are looking out for their employers,” Eldridge said. “It helps for someone to look out for the interests of the injured worker, because who else is going to look out for that?”

If the workers’ compensation claim gets accepted, the employer’s insurance company will pay for their treatment, Eldridge said. During the time an injured worker needs to recover, they are entitled to two-thirds of their average weekly wage, she said.

According to section 12 of the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act, employers can choose a doctor to examine the injured worker and diagnose the extent of their injuries. This can determine the amount of compensation the injured employee receives.

“Sometimes there are disagreements about what an injured worker should be paid when they’re off work,” Eldridge said. “Sometimes there’s disagreement about whether the worker should even be off.”

If the employee’s injury does not seem to match up with their explanation of how they got it, the insurance company can deny the claim, Eldridge said.

“They may be denied that an accident even occurred,” she said.

Within the roofing and construction industries, Eldridge said she typically sees injuries from falls, climbing ladders and carrying heavy equipment or building materials. All of these injuries are covered under worker’s compensation, she said.

“Under workers’ compensation, if you can prove you were within the course and scope of your employment, then it doesn’t matter, at least for the worker’s compensation claim, whether or not there was proper safety,” Eldridge said. “As long as you were doing what your job required you to do, and you were hurt as a result of it, then that would be covered under the workers’ compensation rules.”

According to the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission website, if a business has even one employee, it must obtain workers’ compensation insurance.

However, legal experts said there are still ways to circumvent worker’s compensation claims in Illinois.

Some roofing companies will hire independent contractors instead of employees, which are not eligible for worker’s compensation in Illinois, Jonathan Rosenfeld, founder and managing attorney at Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers, said in an interview.

“They’ll hire [workers from out of state], but they’re not technically an employee of that company. There’s no employment contract, no other benefits,” he said. “They just say, ‘Hey, we’ll pay you a fixed amount per day. And once this job’s over, we’re done.’”

When people get hired out of parking lots, they are also typically classified as independent contractors, Rosenfeld said.

Although independent contractors cannot file a workers’ compensation claim, he said they can still file a third party lawsuit against entities other than their direct employer. In these cases, a worker could get money for future lost wages and other damages not covered under the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act. 

“In workers’ compensation, it’s very black and white. You injure yourself, this is how much money you make, this is the extent of disability, and that’s it. You don’t get money for pain and suffering,” Rosenfeld said. “So, obviously, as an attorney who represents these people, we want to look for other avenues, beyond workers’ compensation.”

Higher fatality rates correlated with weaker workers’ comp laws

Nationally, the coverage of a state’s workers’ compensation program correlated with fatality rates in the construction industry, Wayne Gray, an economics professor at Clark University, said in an interview.

According to his research, states with higher fatality rates tended to have programs with longer wait times for injured employees to claim benefits. States with programs that did not require small businesses to get insurance coverage also tended to have higher fatality rates, he said.

Because many companies in the construction industry are small, they could forgo workers’ compensation insurance in states that did not require it, Gray said.

“Being covered by workers’ compensation insurance means that, if there’s an accident, it’s going to be costly for you,” he said. “Maybe that’s a bigger cost than it would be in a state where you didn’t have to have workers’ compensation insurance.”

The increased cost of injury might encourage businesses to enact more safety measures, Gray said.

“The net cost of having accidents may be lower in states without a strong workers’ compensation program,” he said. “In principle, the workers may be able to sue if they’re injured, but that might not be a process that works very well from the workers’ perspective.”

There was also some evidence that states with more OSHA inspections had lower fatality rates in the construction industry, Gray said. For the people in charge of worker safety, he said getting a safety violation can act as a wake-up call.

“They’re a signal that something’s going wrong here,” he said.

After publishing this research, Gray said he has started studying on-site consultation programs across states.

“In each state, firms can request a consultation, and one of the consultants comes out and identifies if there are any things that could cause an OSHA violation,” he said. “The firm promises to fix any problems that are found, but in return, they don’t get penalized for those possible violations.

“[Businesses] are inviting [safety officials] in to let them know if there are any problems that ned to be fixed, in hopes of avoiding future penalties and hazardous situations.”

States that had more visits proportional to their workforce in the construction industry also tended to have lower fatality rates, Gray said.

“Consultation visits are always voluntary for the employer,” he said. “But in the states where they had more funding, it looked as though they were doing more outreach to people, trying to encourage them to ask for a visit.”

In these better-funded states, Gray said consultation visits tended to be scheduled more quickly, too.

“Part of this big project is [learning] about the quality of the visits or the strategy that the firm takes, in terms of where they send the visits,” Gray said. “Are there better ways of doing consultations? Because with 50 states out there, there’s variety in terms of how they do things.”

On-site program offered to businesses

In Illinois, the on-site program is offered to businesses with less than 250 employees per site and less than 500 employees corporate-wide, Harry Hileman, outreach and marketing coordinator at the Illinois On-Site Safety and Health Consultation program, said in an interview.

These consultations are free and confidential, he said.

“One catastrophic injury can bankrupt a small employer, and our job is to keep that from happening,” he said. “It’s just a better life-health balance if you’re not crippled for the rest of your life after an injury.”

Compared to federal safety officials, on-site consultants give employers a longer timeline to make safety changes, Hileman said. As a result, employers have the time to find quality safety improvements for a lower cost.

To ensure quality consultations, consultants receive yearly training from federal safety officials. Hileman said most consultants were prior OSHA inspectors, which gives them experience in a system with a lot of gray areas.

“So, the differences between us and a private consulting firm are twofold,” he said. “One, we’re free. Two, we know how OSHA operates. We know the standards, we’re not guessing.”

The on-site program also has access to industrial hygienists, which can do air quality, noise and light samples for free, he said.

Within the roofing industry, Hileman said this sampling can help identify asbestos.

But for all of these free services, the employer has to let the consultants in, he said. They cannot force themselves through the door.

“When we go in there, we’re there to help the employer,” he said. “We want to make sure the employer has all the knowledge and tools they need, to create and administer an enduring safety and health program. Something that’s going to last well after we leave.”