Workers' compensation for roofing: the question that protects you.

Most people think of workers' compensation as the roofer's business: a cost of employing people, nothing to do with the customer. On a Texas roof that is wrong in a way that can cost a homeowner their savings. Workers' compensation is the insurance that makes an injury on your roof the employer's problem. Without it, the injury goes looking for someone else to pay, and the owner of the roof is standing right there.

Roofing is consistently among the deadliest occupations the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts, and falls are the leading cause. A Texas roofing crew that carries no workers' compensation is not unusual. It is the norm on a lot of trucks, which is why this is the first thing we tell homeowners to ask, before the price and before the shingle.

In every other state a business with employees must carry workers' compensation insurance. In Texas, according to the Texas Department of Insurance, private employers can choose to carry it, but it is not required in most cases. An employer that opts out is called a non-subscriber. Non-subscribers must tell the state they have no coverage and must report work injuries that cost more than a day of lost time, but they do not have to insure them.

The trade-off the law makes is this: a non-subscriber that is sued by an injured worker loses the usual defenses an employer could raise, so the lawsuit is easier to win. That is meant to discourage opting out. In a trade of small crews, cash pay and high turnover, it has not.

So when a roofing company says "we're fully insured", the question is: insured for what? Texas lets them mean general liability and nothing else.

The two certificates get confused because both arrive on the same kind of form and both say "insurance".

A contractor can hand you a general liability certificate in good faith and still have nobody on the roof covered for a fall. Both certificates, or the second one is missing.

With workers' compensation in place, an injury is a claim. The carrier pays the medical bills and the lost wages, the worker is looked after, and the homeowner is not part of it. That is the whole point of the system.

Without it, an injured worker has medical bills and no income, and the only route to being paid is a lawsuit. The first target is the employer, if the employer can be found and has anything to collect. The second is the property where it happened: a premises liability claim against the homeowner, and against the homeowner's policy, on the theory that the owner allowed unsafe work on the property. Whether such a claim succeeds depends on the facts; whether it costs you months, a lawyer and a claim on your record does not.

This is not a scare story. It is the ordinary consequence of an ordinary fall on a Tuesday, and it is entirely avoidable with one question before the ladder goes up.

1. Ask for the certificate of insurance (the standard one-page form) showing workers' compensation, issued with your name and address as the certificate holder. A certificate made out to someone else, or to nobody, proves less.
2. Read the four things that matter: the insured's legal name (does it match the company on the contract?), the workers' compensation line (is it filled in, or does it say "N/A"?), the policy dates (is today inside them?), and the carrier.
3. Verify it. The Texas Department of Insurance publishes an employer coverage verification tool for workers' compensation, and the carrier named on the certificate will confirm a policy is in force if you call. A certificate is a snapshot; a policy can be canceled the week after it was printed.
4. Keep it with the contract and the warranty.

A company that carries it will be glad you asked. A company that does not will change the subject.

One more layer, because it is where good intentions fail. Many roofing companies do not employ the people who install the roof; they subcontract the labor to a crew leader who brings his own people. The company's workers' compensation policy may cover its office staff and its own employees and not the crew on your roof, unless the policy is written to include subcontracted labor or the crew carries its own.

So the last question is the sharpest: "Does this certificate cover the people who will actually be on my roof?" The honest answers are "yes, they are our employees", "yes, our policy covers subcontracted crews" or "here is the crew's own certificate". Anything vaguer is a no.

Mammoth carries workers' compensation for every person on your roof, and we show you the certificate before your project begins. Ask every roofer for the same thing, in the same words.

Federal law requires fall protection on residential construction at six feet: guardrails, safety nets or a personal fall-arrest system (a harness tied to an anchor), under OSHA's construction standard. A crew working a two-story roof with no harnesses is breaking the law in plain sight, and it tells you two things: how they treat their own people, and how much of the rest of the job is being done properly when nobody is watching.

You do not have to police it. Just look. Anchors on the ridge, harnesses on the crew, a ladder tied off at the top. It takes ten seconds from the driveway and it is the most visible sign of a company that runs a system rather than a truck.