Winter Haven contractor fined $161K by Department of Labor for exposing workers to potentially deadly falls

For the second time in five years, the U.S. Department of Labor found that a construction contractor in Winter Haven violated worker safety rules by failing to provide fall safety equipment for employees working on a roof.

As a result, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has proposed fining the contractor, Carpenters Contractor of America , over $161,000 for their latest violation, which federal investigators found to be “willful” and therefore more serious than an accidental violation.

The Carpenters Contractor of America, which serves major national builders like Lennar Homes and D.R. Horton, has two other Florida locations in Pompano Beach and Fort Myers. They also have two locations in Illinois and North Carolina.  They were last cited by the feds for the same problem in 2019.

“Falls from elevation kill more construction workers than any other industry hazards and yet, far too often, we find employers exposing their employees to debilitating injuries or worse,” OSHA area director Condell Eastmond, based in Fort Lauderdale, shared in a statement. “A commitment to safety must be much more than a phrase on a company’s website, it must involve changing the workplace safety culture.”

The violation was identified through the federal inspection of a home construction site in Collier County. Federal investigators found a lack of fall protection equipment for three of the contractor's workers, who were installing trusses and roof facial 32 feet off the ground on a job site in Ave Maria. No injuries were reported by inspectors, but the risk of this potentially deadly fall hazard was enough to warrant federal scrutiny.

Falls are one of the deadliest hazards in the construction industry, and federal data shows construction drives the highest number of workplace fatalities in the state. According to investigators, the three roofing workers were not protected by any sort of guardrail, safety net, personal fall arrest or any alternative protection system against falls, as is required.

Under the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act, employers are responsible for providing an approved form of fall protection to construction workers when they are working more than six feet off the ground, and to provide working conditions that are “free of known dangers.”

Carpenter Contractors of America, a repeat violator, had been previously cited and fined by regulators in 2018 for failing retrain employees on how to use fall protection equipment on a job site in Port St. Lucie. A year later, they were cited by regulators for failing to provide fall protection for employees on a different residential job site in Port St. Lucie, thereby failing to protect them from fall hazards. The organization did not return Orlando Weekly's request for comment.

Safety on construction sites was hotly contested during Florida's 2024 legislative session, during which lawmakers approved legislation that, in part, loosened child labor rules on residential construction sites.

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As Orlando Weekly previously reported, public records show that the legislation was written by lobbyists for two industry trade groups, the Associated Builders and Contractors of Florida and the Florida Home Builders Association.

Carpenter Contractors of America, which hasn't been found guilty of violating child labor laws, is nonetheless a member of the Greater Orlando Builders Association, a local chapter of the FHBA.

The new law, approved with bipartisan support from state lawmakers , allows 16- and 17-year-olds to work on home construction sites, provided they have received certification through a 10-hour OSHA training course and are working under the direct supervision of an adult aged 21 or over.

The law, effective July 1, also prohibits older teens from doing roofing work more than 6 feet off the ground, as federal law also forbids. The original version of the bill, as filed, did not. Even with that important prohibition still in place, however, critics of the rollbacks have expressed skepticism about the state’s capacity for enforcement.

“In Florida, like a lot of the South, the federal government is the only act in town,” David Weil, a former administrator of the DOL’s Wage and Hour division, told Orlando Weekly in an interview about proposed child labor rollbacks.

Not only does Florida lack a centralized state labor department, it also does not have a state OSHA office, unlike many other states . Federal OSHA does have several field offices in Florida, but the state had only 53 OSHA regulators as of last year.

“If we rely on OSHA, there's so few OSHA investigators in the state of Florida, it would take hundreds of years to investigate all the job sites,” Dr. Rich Templin, lobbyist for Florida's largest federation of labor unions, the Florida AFL-CIO, told lawmakers during a Senate hearing on the bill.

The number of federal child labor regulators in Florida also recently decreased, from 47 in December to 41 in June, a spokesperson confirmed. Meanwhile, the state employs just eight as of publication.

The new law, which also aims to strengthen the state’s career and technical education program in schools, was sponsored by Republican Rep. John Snyder, who defended the bill as an effort to expand job and training opportunities for teens in the trade. This sentiment was echoed by State Rep. Johanna Lopez, a local Democrat who co-sponsored the bill.

“My intention with this vote was to empower students to pursue their desired career with on-the-job training,” Lopez told Orlando Weekly .

The law was unanimously approved in the state Senate, with a glowing show of support from Democrats, and was approved almost unanimously in the Florida House, where nearly a couple dozen Democrats later changed their "yes" or "absent" votes to "no." Less than a handful of Democrats were vocally critical of the bill from the onset.

Loosening restrictions on child labor on dangerous job sites is one of many policy recommendations detailed in Project 2025, a right-wing policybook developed by the Heritage Foundation that several Florida Democrats — including Lopez — have criticized. Project 2025, designed as a blueprint for the next Republican U.S. president, calls on policymakers to “ amend” federal rules on hazardous work for young workers “to permit teenage workers access to work in regulated jobs with proper training and parental consent.”

“With parental consent and proper training, certain young adults should be allowed to learn and work in more dangerous occupations,” writes Project 2025 co-author Jonathan Berry, who served as chief counsel to former President Donald Trump during his transition to the White House in 2016. “This would give a green light to training programs and build skills in teenagers who may want to work in these fields."

Florida’s new law doesn’t require older teens to get parental consent to work on residential construction sites. But it does require teens to obtain certification through a 10-hour OSHA course first.

Both the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation, plus federal regulators in OSHA and the WHD, offer free educational resources for employers to avoid noncompliance and potential fines from labor violations.

“Workers have a right to a safe workplace, and employers must take all necessary steps to protect them, including identifying and eliminating hazards commonly associated with their industry,” said Edmond, the OSHA head in Ft. Lauderdale. “If they fail to do so, they can expect hefty fines like the one assessed in this investigation.”

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