A Vancouver, Wash.-based contractor is under renewed scrutiny after the Port of Longview temporarily halted its $44 million rail expansion project in June. The pause in construction comes after a second worker in two years was airlifted with severe injuries sustained on a jobsite operated by the construction company, Rotschy Inc.
When the company was awarded the Industrial Rail Corridor Expansion project, Rotschy was already on state officials’ radar following a 2023 workplace injury that left a 16-year-old missing both legs. The project would add two new rail tracks along the Columbia River.
“It’s a big-enough project, I am genuinely concerned someone else is going to get hurt,” said Evan Jones, a Port commissioner, in an interview with Cascade PBS.
Work on the project resumed on June 13, after the Port’s commissioners reviewed Rotschy’s health and safety plan and decided to hire a third party to monitor the project. Local labor unions have protested the Port’s decision to hire Rotschy due to its safety history, which spans 25 serious violations and $264,000 in fines over the past five years.
The contractor is appealing some of those citations and said the criticism from unions stems from the project being awarded to a non-union employer.
Founded by a father and son in 1988, Rotschy began as an excavation business, clearing land and building forest roads in southwest Washington, according to company records. It has since grown to more than 500 employees.
In late January, when Port staff identified Rotschy as the lowest responsible bidder for the rail expansion project, local unions asked commissioners to reopen bidding for the project, adding criteria that would consider the safety records of potential applicants.
Generally, state law requires that public projects be awarded to the company with the lowest bid that meets all requirements. In a 2-1 vote, commissioners approved awarding the project to Rotschy. Jones was the only commissioner to support rebidding the project.
Criticism of Rotschy ramped up again in April when the state Department of Labor & Industries referred criminal felony criminal charges to a local prosecutor over a teen’s injuries on a company worksite in 2023. In a letter, the workplace-safety enforcement agency asked the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to investigate and prosecute the company.
A 2024 Cascade PBS investigation into the teen’s injuries found the company violated safety and labor laws, and that the teen’s school district failed to provide adequate oversight ahead of the incident. L&I had also continued to approve minor work “variances” allowing teens to perform riskier tasks despite the company’s record of safety citations.
In response to the severe injuries the minor suffered while employed by Rotschy, the state Legislature passed a bill tightening youth labor laws earlier this year.
A few weeks after the rail expansion project broke ground, a second worker was severely hurt at a different Rotschy construction site on June 3.
According to the Woodland Police Department, an unsecured excavator bucket fell onto the lower half of the 35-year-old man’s body while he worked in a trench. It took almost 90 minutes to extricate him from the bottom of the trench, according to the 911 call records. An L&I investigation is expected to take months.
Two days later, the Port issued its stop-work order on the rail expansion project, according to Dale Lewis, a spokesperson for the Port.
“This pause was to make some adds to the health and safety plan with the contractor,” he wrote in an email.
The Port lifted the order June 13, after Rotschy met with commissioners at an open meeting to make changes to the company’s health and safety plan. Commissioners also requested that a third party be hired to oversee safety on the site. According to Jones, the Port will be funding that position.
“To a certain extent we are kinda stuck with them. If I can’t get rid of the bastards, I want to make sure they are doing the right thing,” Jones said. “I’m not thrilled about it, it’s not how I like taxpayer money being spent.”
He said not including bidding criteria that evaluate a company’s safety record was an oversight.
“We hobbled ourselves,” Jones added.
Rotschy spokesperson Nick Massie said the company made changes after the worker in Woodland was injured — adding daily huddles and hiring its own safety manager to be onsite full-time.
“It was a horrible accident,” Massie said when reached by phone. “It’s unfortunate it happened."
According to a spokesperson for PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver, the injured worker was in satisfactory condition as of late June.
Massie attributed union pushback to the project to the fact that it was awarded to a non-union employer.
“We were awarded that project long before the Woodland injury.” Massie said, “That should have had no impact on our ability to do the work.”
Over the past two weeks, the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 701, along with other local union members, posted signs and a large inflatable pig and rat outside the Port and Rotschy headquarters and company construction sites to protest their hiring.
Mike Bridges, president of the Longview/Kelso Building and Construction Trades Council, said unions fight for better working conditions for both unionized and non-union workers.
“We don’t have time to protest every job that doesn't go our way,” Bridges said.
