Firms Can’t Stall Workers’ Need for Relief, OSHA Says

If you have to go, the government says the boss must let you.

The federal agency that oversees workplace health said Thursday that employers not only have to provide restrooms, they have to allow workers to use them.

For some workers, that’s not always been the case.

The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has long required that toilet facilities “be provided in all places of employment” for all workers. But that regulation merely requires employers to have enough bathrooms. It says nothing about giving workers access to them.

There’s no problem for most of the nation’s workers; they just get up and go. But in some jobs, such as food processing, assembly lines and telemarketing, meeting a simple human need can involve pleading and even the risk of losing a job.

OSHA spokesman Stephen Gaskill said the agency believed that when it required restroom facilities in all workplaces 20 years ago, it made it clear to companies that workers have the right to use them as the need arises.

Now, he said, there have been enough complaints to show that the rule must be spelled out.

“We’re telling employers that within reason and when necessary, workers should have the ability to use a restroom,” Gaskill said.

In a memo interpreting the previous regulations, the agency said it is clear that “all employees must have prompt access to toilet facilities.”

“Restrictions on access must be reasonable and may not cause extended delays,” the memo said. “Timely access is the goal of the standard.”

It noted that a number of companies concerned about uninterrupted production have set up signal or relief systems for workers on assembly lines or other jobs “where an employee’s absence, even for the brief time it takes to go to the bathroom, would be disruptive.”

“Under these systems, an employee who needs to use the bathroom gives some sort of a signal so that another employee may provide relief while the first employee is away from the work station,” the OSHA memo said.

“As long as there are sufficient relief workers to ensure that employees need not wait an unreasonably long time to use the bathroom, OSHA believes that these systems comply with the standard,” the agency said.

The OSHA memo stated that workers denied prompt access to restroom facilities can suffer adverse health effects. OSHA field inspectors can issue citations for violations.