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OSHA Reverses Home Worker Advisory
Masloki sent it: an article on prodigy-news that says "Facing a barrage of criticism, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman today withdrew a federal interpretation letter saying that companies' normal workplace safety obligations also apply to employees who do their work at home." That's one OSHA regulatory attempt that certainly didn't last very long; we only got the word about the proposed regulation yesterday.
the, "Employees must wash hands before returning to work" sign I put in my bathroom.
I was really disappointed to hear this. ONE DAY after it is first proposed?
The change in question was regarding telecommuting. Do you really want OSHA inspectors in your home? Or regular visits from the equivilant from your employer? How else could an employer make sure your home meets OSHA requirements?
The answer is simple, the employer CAN'T and wont. Telecommuters would have ended up back in the cube farm again where their employer could micro manage their work environment to limit liability.
As someone pointed out (late enough that it'll probably get lost in the shuffle, as will this comment), this was an advisory (not even a proposed regulation) sent to a specific employer when they asked about their situation. Their situation was not telecommuting. It was handling of explosive material, specifically fireworks.
Now, maybe you think employers should be responsible for their employees' safety if they get their workers to assemble fireworks at home in their spare time, and maybe you don't. But the fact is that the haymakers here weren't "the administration," they were the administration's opponents, who want to take every opportunity possible to pump up the theory "Democrats = regulation, regulation = bad." The RNC went so far as to issue a press release that all but said Gore and Bradley were personally responsible for this stupid oppression of all home workers. Don't believe it--and don't buy into the "we're the anti-government party" rhetoric when either party spouts it. Not all regulations are bad, and conversely, bad regulation cuts across party lines handily (just like overspending and tax raises do).
And, don't paint OSHA as the bad guys. They're severely understaffed and can't enforce most of what they're charged with anyway--and if you look at most of what they do (instead of digging for spectacular stupids, which any set of regulations will have a few of), those regulations came about after accidents that they're trying to prevent. (The anti-regulation forces always somehow forget that the majority of regulation came about because of public outcry, not because bureaucrats wanted to make their own jobs more difficult.)
Down the line, if "creators become fewer" as you say, what would there be to copy? Nothing? But people need software, music, entertainment, so.... software, music, and entertainment would still get created.
How about we make a law saying that all food must be given away free. People need food, and so it would still get produced, right?
If all information were free then musicians, artists, software developers and authors would all be to busy doing their "day job" to be able to do much work on creating information. Very few people would be able to afford to work on creating full-time. Quality would go down significantly. A musician who plays music 8 hours per day is generally much better than one who plays 1 hour every couple of days.
Look at Linux. I can download it for free. Repackage and sell it for free. Build a business on it (Red Hat) for free. The very existance of GNU, FSF, Open Source, Linux, BSD, invalidates your theory.
No, actually they provide evidence to support my theory. Look at Linux. Look at how much profit the average Linux developer makes off of Linux. Zero. Most Linux developers either have a day job (most likly writing proprietary software, doing tech support, or acting as a sys-admin), while the remaining are generally students. The same is true for most other open-source/free software projects.
I've contributed to several free software projects myself. I have a day job writing proprietary software. Before that I was a student, living off student loans an co-op (writing proprietary software).
If I could make a decent living writing free software full time I would. As it is, there are only a few types of software for which a sensible open source business model exists. Device drivers, for example. I'm not interested in writing device drivers, nor are most musicians, painters or sculptors, I would imagine.
Painters and sculptors can at least make money off the originals. Musicians could theoretically make money from their live performances, but the ticket prices would skyrocket. Creators of digital media, have no such "originals" (since a copy is just as good), and there's no such thing as a "live performance", unless you mean tech support. I don't want to be doing tech support, I want to write code.
Incidently, has it occurred to you that having support sellers fund open source development is really a conflict of interests?
Lets take some examples;
- Company X supplies a company car. The brakes fail, but it's outside the office - do you think they get away with it?
- Company Y asks an employee to deliver a package. It explodes, but it's outside the office - again, who do you think gets their arses sued?
Individuals are already well protected, regardless if they're an employee or not, regardless if they're in the office or not. Being an employee does not remove individual protection...So yes, this will be revisited -- with ample media attention no doubt. No, its not a disaster -- any more than the idea that employers may have some responsibilities for home office conditions is a disaster. It is the start of a broad discussion of a previously unexplored issue that is very relevant to those of us that telecom mute.
I couldn't find the contorversial letter in a quick scan of the Labor Department and OSHA sites. I suppose its been removed. Does anyone have a URL for it? I would have expected to find it here but its a gonner.
Nice line there. I like to take it one step further. From all people who claim "information wants to be free", I would like the following information:
Where do you live?
If you have an alarm system, how do I disable it?
Where in your home is your computer?
When will you be away from home?
Privacy concerns can quickly become personal security concerns. It is vital that not all information become free.
At the job I used to have I asked about tele-commuting. The head IT guy (who was married to an HR manager) said that one of the reasons they didn't allow it was this OSHA thing.
That was 2 years ago.
So the question is, did you HEAR about it yesterday, or did it HAPPEN yesterday.
---
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Good thing I don't work at home -- OSHA definitely would have nixed that GalaxyQuest crusher corridor I was planning to install....
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Newspeak-to-English Translation: "Oops; we've been spotted. Better lie low until the heat's off."
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
You know, when people do this with physical goods rather than words, it's called "bait and switch", and it's (quite legitimately) illegal.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The other problem is that sweatshop-like expectations already exist in tech fields. Remember the "high-tech sweatshop" article from a few months back? I see plenty of possibilities for abuse of at-home workers here.
At a company that shall remain nameless that I used to work for, a "capacity planning" study was going on. Basically, they wanted the "average" time it took someone to perform each and every possible job function. And given the way management worked at that company, if it normally took me 4 minutes to do Task A, and a Task A-like item that was a bit abnormal came across my desk and took me 15 minutes to handle properly, I'd be in trouble.
In fact, since the volume of work we handled varied so frequently, the department was continually barraged with "What do you people DO all day?" by other departments as well as by our own managers. Um, we try to keep on top of all the ridiculous little projects you keep assigning us, that don't do much beyond eat time anyhow. They also cut our department from six people to four during the year I was there, and rumor has it my position wasn't replaced either (this from a former co-worker that claimed the place went to hell in a handbasket when I left
That experience just left a bad taste in my mouth.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I also noticed something weird yesterday where a one-point positive moderation of one of my posts increased my karma by three points.
Must be Y2Karma problems.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It would be unfortunate if the government inspected your own home and made you install 10 fire exstinguishers, 1,000 feet of stainless steel railing, 4 handicap accessible bathrooms and whatever local municpal code is all the rage.
Can't wait for the health inspector to check out my fridge. "2 month old Peanut butter? $500 fine!"
Let's keep the banal wanna-be socialism and socialists to a minimum eh?
Libertarianism would probably demand to dissolve OSHA completely, my post suggests we keep things the way they are which is the definition of conservative. You are still a socialist though.
'We all got an opinion' all right, but some of us are actually right!
You're right. Before OSHA was established in 1971, conditions were exactly like they were in the 1800's.
-Jordan Henderson
With your cynicism toward politicians and your apparent belief that Agencies like OSHA protect us from horrific backward conditions, perhaps you'd prefer that Government be taken away from those rascally politicians and give it over to the enlightened beaurocrats you seem to trust.
After all, if a Government by politicians can't be trusted, how can we trust them to run our cherished Regulatory Agencies?
-Jordan Henderson
If you work at work, they have a responsibility to provide a suitable environs for you to work in. Perhaps there is a tradeoff if you wish to work at home?
Or, let's look at it this way. What if OSHA said that a business had to provide a reasonable working environment somewhere. The company doesn't want to pay for the desk, chair, and whatever widgets they have for your use at the company as well as the ones you have at home. That is not cost efficient. But you could have a reasonable chair (perhaps the same ones the company buys) and similar ergonomic benifits at home provided you did not have them at work. You are responsible for transporting the company's goods from one place to another. They are, in effect, checked out.
If you work more at work, you may just for get the whole thing, while if your office at work is more or less where you store things, and you do the bulk of your work at home, you go buy a cheap chair somewhere so when you have to do something at work, you have somewhere to sit.
/dev/psychic: No medium found
keep the socialism to a minimum? Uh, only if you agree to keep your libertarianism to a minimim. Hey, we've all got an opinion, and they're all political. There is no neutral ground.
That's not my view. Basically OSHA does more good than bad for the average worker, therefore I support it. I'm not applying a strict ideology.
Yes, I am definatly stereotyping. Frankly after giving poiticians a chance (republican or democrat) for a number of years, I'm sick of the lies, the half-truths, etc. Normally I don't see any reason to give them the benefit of the doubt when I've been lied to so many times.
Also note I'm calling for something reasonable, don't try to pull me to one end of the "all or nothing" on this issue. I think they should pay for an ergonomic setup, and if you are doing, say, home assembly, and their tools cause you to get injured, they should be liable if the tools are deemed unsafe. Things like that. I'm not calling for this "liable if anything in your house causes you to get hurt" that you seem to suggest.
ok, mix up on my part. I'd still put forth the same comments. The fact that there was enough pressure on them to withdraw a semi-formal letter still worries me a lot.
Homer J. Simpson today withdrew his suit against Springfield Nuclear Power Plant alleging that the company's decision to allow him to work from home led to a bizarre accident causing the irradiation of his rear end.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
However, should your company be required to comply with the regs addressing ergodynamics. I'm not so certain that it is not unreasonable to require an employer to supply a worker with a good chair . While an employer should not have to renovate an employee's home they should likewise not be able to escape the duty to provide a relatively safe working environment.
My bet is that you are going to see a hybrid set of regs promulgated shortly addressing telecommuters/at home employees. The issue will be heavily lobbied however, as I am certain that most corps have little or no interest in even providing chairs and wrist rests if they aren't compelled to do so. That bodes poorly for the at home workers as their lobbying might is, well, underwhelming.
I do, however, guarantee that this is not the last we have heard about OSHA compliance in the home. It's always fun to watch government at work.
rootrot
...is that the any part of the government can unfuck a poor decision in this short of a time period. And for all those who insist that there should be some kind of regulations for the home: Piss off. Unless you're forced to work at home, you have absolutley no ground to stand on. And even then, you're probably paid well enough to by your own chair. PLaNetJoe and all you monkeys need some exercise.
-too fucked to drink.
Implications:
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The IRS doesn't like it, and won't let you. There are rulings about this all the time.
Basically: if you treat them as if they are an employee, then they ARE an employee.
Some of the indications they look for:
* The 'contractors' actually only work for one company.
* They don't have limited term contracts, or they are constantly, automatically renewed.
* They're subject to the same employee-handbook type rules and restrictions as employees.
* No more flexibility in working hours than an employee
> ONE DAY after it is first proposed?
/. to propose regulations. The actual date of the "federal interpetation letter" from OSHA was Nov 15.
Believe it or not, OSHA doesn't use
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
This is a problem no matter how you look at it.
... until they get it. A small few might consider this a great opportunity to squeeze some new office furniture out of the company.
With the numbers of home workers now stretching into the millions, there is an urgent need to ensure that these workers are protected from injury. The problem is whose responsibility this is going to be.
With the publication of this new "interpretive letter", OSHA put thousands of companies on notice that they were now going to be responsible for workplace ergonomics/safety issues in home offices over which they have little direct control.
At the same time, millions of telecommuters, salesmen, freelancers, consultants, and others found themselves faced with the possibility that the company they now work with at arm's length will suddenly require an inspection of their home office.
Neither the companies nor the telecommuters, by and large, wanted any part of this. Companies would have been forced to either buy new equipment and expand human resources monitoring, or rescind moves toward telecommuting; workers would have been forced to let the company inspect their home, or return to the office. Very few workers consider RSI a serious problem
In a word, this regulation could have killed the telecommuting golden goose.
The good that has been done is to bring this issue to the forefront. The OSHA people are asking for input on how to implement basic regulatory requirements for the home office. This can have a happy ending; for instance, in a related situation, the IRS at first announced highly restrictive new guidelines for tax deductibility of home offices, then Congress rewrote the law so that the status quo would continue.
The outcome here is possibly/likely going to result in individual responsibility for these safety/ergonomic issues, while signing off on a legal form that absolves the employer of responsibility. Hopefully, in the process, there will also be an education campaign to ensure that these spun-off workers have some sense of how the decisions they're making will affect their future health.
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
OSHA won't recommend rules for telecommuters' home offices. This is good!
Unfortunately, the cat's already out of the bag. "What a neat idea", you can almost hear people thinking. "I can now get my employer to buy me a new ergonomic chair for the home office and a keyboard tray and an ergo keyboard and..." And some of these many people work for a company that laughs at the request. And one of those people will develop some form of RSI while telecommuting from home in their non-ergonomic environment.
And that bastard's gonna sue.
Soon, his company will be paying out a huge settlement, some of which will be absorbed probably by insurance, being medically related. And the insurance companies will notice. And they'll declare higher rates for companies that allow telecommuting.
I don't think it will completely kill telecommuting, but once the problem enters the realms of the beancounters, nothing is safe...
I was really disappointed to hear this. ONE DAY after it is first proposed? Wether or not you agree with some of the specifics (the staircase example seems a bit much), something HAS to be done when 20 Million people work this way, and yes, it needs to be regulated. If we didn't have an organization like OSHA we'd be back to the 1800's where it wasn't uncommon for people to die in factories on a regular basis.
I wonder where all the pressure came from. Citizens? Or the business lobby? Given the fact that the two politicians that were quoted were Republicans, it must have been mostly from the business side. If you doubt corporate power, getting this blown away in one day should make you think otherwise.
Also:
Republican leaders had already pledged to scrutinize OSHA after Congress returns from its holiday break because of regulations the agency
proposed in November that would require employers to minimize everyday physical - or "ergonomic" - stresses of certain jobs.
What the hell is wrong with this? This is referring to proposed regulations at the company's site, not even at home. Corporations can't even tolerate these minimal expenses (when they might actually save money due to less employee time lost)? When corporate profits are at or near all time highs, why do we allow them to get away with this? Does anyone else find this to be really unfortunate?
Since I sent them a handwritten letter I'll try to recreate some of my points here:
1) Telecommuting is a giant ergonomic plus in and of itself. The workers will automatically adjust their home environment to their liking for when they are working (and even when they're not).
2) This being true, the benefit gained by forcing employers to take on the same obligations towards telecommuting workers as they have for onsite employees, will be strongly offset by a cutback in telecommuting programs. This will have a small but negative impact on the environment, as former telecommuters go back to their full morning/nite automobile commute schedule.
3) Who is to say the telecommuter won't do something to the furniture (say, SELL it)? This opens the door for the necessity of increased monitoring and accounting of their behavior at home, which is already certain to rise to alarming levels just to keep track of their work habits. A company trying to manage a telecommuter's ergonomic safety in the home, looks to be like trying to gently set down a can of charcoal lighter fluid on burning coals. Not a good idea. (And the people who try it won't get to keep their souls. heh.)
4) For the sake of ergonomic improvements and the environment, I would suggest two revisions:
A) Publish information about ergonomic issues at home, for telecommuters. Give employers a small financial incentive to disseminate this information. Let the telecommuters make their own well informed ergonomic decisions at home.
B) Provide more incentives to companies to push more of their tasks that have telecommuting potential, into telecommuting programs. Companies that do this should be assessed tax credits that will be ledgered against environmental funds (in other words take the tax credit loss out on the eco budget because it is, after all, cutting down on pollution from automobile commutes).
I wrote this last night and threw it in the mailbox this morning. And lo and behold the situation is already resolved. Grrrrrrrrrr. Oh well!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Its not a coincidence that this retraction comes just hours after a large number of work at home Slashdot readers started filing for damages due to Linux "research" involving the latest Playboy issue.
I don't think anyone really can know the lasting trauma of a poorly placed papercut till it happens to a sensitive area.
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