Employer Violations Dashboard

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) sets the standards that protect workers from hazards, such as falls, trenching cave-ins, and exposure to infectious diseases or harmful substances like asbestos and lead. Employers are legally required to follow OSHA standards. Some state governments also regulate workplace safety via State Plans, which are OSHA-approved workplace safety and health programs. However, New York State’s Plan only applies to state and local government workers. Thus, New York private sector employers and their workers are covered only by federal OSHA standards. OSHA has the power to conduct inspections and issue citations to employers that violate the applicable standards. There are four categories of violations for which OSHA can cite an employer, in descending order of severity: “Willful”, “Serious”, “Repeated”, and “Other-Than-Serious.”  The following charts include the Willful violations, which are defined as “a violation in which the employer either knowingly failed to comply with a legal requirement (purposeful disregard) or acted with plain indifference to employee safety,” along with “Serious” violations that meet a specific severity threshold. [1]

Source: Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) Enforcement Data

The following tables from OSHA Enforcement Data were used: osha_violation,osha_inspection, osha_accident, and osha_accident_injury. Employer names for each violation were retrieved by matching the field “activity_nr” with the inspection data table. Associated fatalities for each violation were retrieved by first matching the field “activity_nr” in the violation data with “rel_insp_nr” in the osha_accident_inury table to retrieve the data for the field “summary nr.” Then, the “summary nr” field was used to find matches in the osha_accident table, to retrieve “event_desc” and “fatality”.

The table includes closed cases where Willful and Serious violations were found in 2023 and 2024 for worksites located within New York City. Serious violations were only included if there was an associated fatality and more than five workers exposed. If an employer is listed in multiple rows within the same table, it means that each of those violations was from the same inspection. Some of the associated inspections for these violations yielded other violations not listed in the tables. These can be found in the full Employer Violations Dashboard dataset.

New York City Department of Buildings

Construction is a major industry in New York City where significant workplace safety hazards may occur. Among other responsibilities, the New York City Department of Buildings (“DOB”) enforces City laws that safeguard against unsafe construction practices. DOB investigates and brings charges against property owners and contractors who violate these laws. Many of these cases are ultimately brought before the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (“OATH”), where judges determine whether these laws were violated.

The respondents listed below include construction contractors found by OATH to have violated certain[2] DOB-enforced laws related to construction safety, primarily set forth in DOB Code Chapter 33, Safeguards During Construction or Demolition.[3] and received an “Aggravated II” penalty, the most severe penalty OATH can issue.

Source: DOB ECB Violations | NYC Open Data

[1] Federal Employer Rights and Responsibilities Following an OSHA Inspection-1996 | Occupational Safety and Health Administration

[2] See full dataset for a list of all the specific violations included in this section

[3] Chapter 33 Safeguards During Construction or Demolition: New York City Building Code 2014 | UpCodes