Talking with a General Contractor

          This is a post I have been meaning to make ever since first visiting the bank here in Waldwick, NJ but never got around to until now.  When I first visited the site last Friday I made sure to bring along my PPE and I approached the site hesitantly looking for the General Contractor.  Immediately upon seeing me a man approached me and asked if he could help me.  As I explained that I was a student working on a project for one of my classes and asked to take some pictures of his site.  The contractor seemed very hesitant and after proving I was a student by showing him my school ID and the type of courses I was enrolled in he explained his initial hesitation to allow me on the site.  Unlike many construction companies in the south, NJ has many Unionized companies.  The contractor explained that he owned two Unionized companies and that it was not uncommon for non union workers to report workers on the site for safety violations and other infractions in order to have them thrown off the job, in turn hoping to themselves get hired.
          I found this very interesting that this type of behavior goes on.  However seeing that Union workers often get much better pay and benefits, and non union workers were less likely to get jobs it shouldn't have been that much of a surprise.
          The contractor went on to tell me that the site had already been visited once by an OSHA official after a report of a safety violation on the site.  For this reason he explained the importance of insurance in construction and asked that I remain far out of the way of the workers while on the site.
          The moral of this post is that it is always important to know who you are letting on your job site and to make sure that they know what they are doing while on the site to ensure that they do not cost you money in the end.