The Multi-Employer Worksite Doctrine
What it Means for Roofing Contractors & Why it Should be Reformed
by Trent Cotney, Partner, Adams & Reese, LLP
(Editor’s Note: Trent Cotney, partner at Adams & Reese, LLP, is dedicated to representing the roofing and construction industries. Cotney is General Counsel for the Western States Roofing Contractors Association and several other industry associations. For more information, contact Cotney at (866) 303-5868 or go to www.adamsandreese.com.)
On a modern roofing project, it is common to see a general contractor, one or more roofing subcontractors, safety consultants, manufacturers’ representatives, and other trades working on the same site at the same time. That reality creates overlapping operational risk, but it also creates a difficult legal question under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA): when a hazard exists on a shared jobsite, which employer can OSHA cite? OSHA’s answer is the multi-employer worksite doctrine, a policy that allows the agency to cite more than one employer for the same hazardous condition. For roofing contractors, the doctrine matters because it can extend liability beyond the employer whose own employees were exposed and can impose citation risk based on site relationships, contractual authority, and perceived control.
As enforced by OSHA, the doctrine generally recognizes four categories of employers. A creating employer is the employer that caused the hazardous condition. An exposing employer is the employer whose employees were exposed to the hazard. A correcting employer is the employer responsible for fixing the hazard. A controlling employer is the employer with general supervisory authority over the worksite, including the power to require others to correct safety and health violations. In practice, one employer may fit more than one category. A general contractor might be deemed a controlling employer. A roofing subcontractor might be both a creating employer and an exposing employer. A site safety consultant or another trade might play a role in identifying or correcting a condition without having created it.
For the roofing industry, the doctrine has broad practical consequences. A roofing contractor may face citation exposure not only for the acts of its own crew but also for conditions created by other trades or for hazards in common areas, access points, staging zones, or material handling paths. A prime contractor or construction manager may face exposure because OSHA believes it had enough supervisory authority to detect and require correction of a hazardous condition, even if it did not create the hazard and did not direct the injured worker’s means and methods. On many jobs, especially larger commercial projects, the doctrine effectively turns contractual oversight into enforcement risk.
Supporters of the doctrine argue that it reflects the realities of multi-trade construction. OSHA’s position is that on a shared site, safety cannot be compartmentalized if one employer has the ability to prevent or abate a serious hazard. In that sense, the doctrine aims to prevent employers from avoiding responsibility by pointing at each other. From a policy perspective, that goal has intuitive appeal. No one in the roofing industry benefits when known fall hazards, unsafe access, electrical exposure, or material handling risks go unaddressed because each employer claims the problem belongs to someone else.
The problem is that the doctrine often reaches beyond that common-sense objective. The Occupational Safety and Health Act imposes duties on employers to protect their own employees, and the text of the statute does not clearly set out the expansive framework OSHA now uses on multi-employer sites. Over time, enforcement has drifted toward a model that can impose liability on upstream parties based less on actual creation of a hazard and more on generalized authority, paperwork language, or the mere existence of a supervisory role. That creates uncertainty for contractors trying to understand where legitimate project oversight ends and citation exposure begins.
Roofing contractors feel this tension in concrete ways. Prime contractors are routinely encouraged to maintain safety programs, coordinate trades, conduct observations, and step in when they see dangerous conditions. Those are good practices. They protect workers and improve project outcomes. Yet the current doctrine can punish the very parties that attempt to promote safety across the site. When a contractor knows that increased involvement may later be characterized as “control” for citation purposes, the law creates a perverse incentive. Instead of encouraging experienced contractors to help correct hazards affecting subcontractors, the doctrine can chill voluntary safety assistance out of fear that helpful conduct will be used as evidence of responsibility.
That chilling effect is one of the strongest arguments for reform. The law should encourage prime contractors and higher-tier contractors to support site safety without automatically converting every act of oversight, coordination, or assistance into a basis for OSHA liability. A contractor that provides guardrails, shares best practices, funds training, or orders a dangerous condition corrected should not be penalized simply because it acted responsibly. A sound enforcement framework should distinguish between true operational control over the work that created the hazard and general project-level authority intended to keep the job moving and the site safe.
Reform should begin with clearer limits on the controlling-employer theory. OSHA should tie controlling-employer liability to actual authority and actual capacity to prevent or abate the specific hazard at issue, not merely broad contractual language or general site coordination duties. The inquiry should focus on whether the employer had a real and practical ability to detect the condition in time, require correction, and ensure that correction occurred. It should also consider whether the employer exercised direct operational control over the work that gave rise to the hazard. Those limits would preserve accountability for parties that truly control dangerous conditions while reducing unfair exposure for parties whose role is largely administrative or advisory.
A second reform should create a meaningful safe harbor for contractors that take reasonable steps to improve site safety. If a contractor conducts periodic observations, reports hazards, requires correction by the responsible employer, documents follow-up, and lacks direct control over the injured employees’ work, those efforts should weigh strongly against citation as a controlling employer. Without such a safe harbor, contractors may conclude that the safest legal course is to do less, not more. That is a bad outcome for workers and a bad outcome for the industry.
A third reform should require greater precision in OSHA’s proof. Before citing a contractor on a multi-employer theory, the agency should identify the exact basis for the employer’s role, the specific hazard involved, the scope of the employer’s authority, and the facts showing that reasonable care required more than the employer actually did. Too often, citations rely on broad assumptions about who was “in charge” rather than on careful evidence about who actually controlled the work, who had notice of the condition, and who could realistically correct it. Greater rigor would improve fairness and would make citations more consistent across area offices and compliance officers.
None of this means abandoning shared responsibility on a roofing project. Contractors must still protect their own employees, comply with OSHA standards, and address hazards within their scope of control. Employers that create hazards or knowingly allow their own employees to work in dangerous conditions should remain fully accountable. But a doctrine that sweeps too broadly does not strengthen safety. It blurs responsibility, discourages intervention, and increases conflict among project participants. In an industry where coordination is essential and where fall protection, access, weather exposure, and sequencing issues can change by the hour, the law should reward practical hazard correction rather than discourage it.
For the roofing industry, reform of the multi-employer worksite doctrine is not about escaping responsibility. It is about restoring balance. Contractors need a rule that recognizes the realities of construction, respects the limits of statutory duty, and encourages proactive safety involvement rather than punishing it. A narrower, clearer, and more predictable doctrine would better serve employers, workers, and the goal everyone shares: safer jobsites with accountability placed where it truly belongs.
