Firms Liable for Home Work Sites, U.S. Says
Companies that allow employees to work at home are responsible for federal health and safety violations that occur at the home work site, according to a Labor Department advisory that could put a damper on telecommuting.
The decision covers the estimated 19.6 million adult workers--including about 1.7 million in Southern California--who regularly work from their homes, plus millions more who work at home occasionally. It even covers the parent who has to dash out of the office to be with a sick child and finishes a memo at home.
“If an employer is allowing it to happen, it is covered,” said Charles Jeffress, the assistant secretary of labor in charge of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which issued the advisory in response to a request from one employer in Texas. The advisory is not a proposed rule, but rather a declaration of existing policy the agency deems already to be in effect. OSHA spent more than two years formulating its written response on the work-at-home issue.
Although the advisory does not provide specifics, in effect it means that employers are responsible for making sure an employee has ergonomically correct furniture, such as chairs and computer tables, as well as proper lighting, heating, cooling and ventilation systems in the home office. The employer must also provide any needed training to comply with OSHA standards, including making sure the home work space has emergency medical plans and a first-aid kit.
The Labor Department advisory would “ask the impossible of the employer. You’re asking employers to control an environment that’s physically beyond their reach,” said Al Lundeen, the Sacramento-based spokesman of the National Coalition on Ergonomics.
“Why should an employer try to control your environment at home, when they can handle it at the traditional work site?” he added.
But Peg Seminario, health and safety director of the AFL-CIO, said she agrees with the policy spelled out in the advisory.
“It makes sense,” she said. “Employers have to provide employees a workplace free from hazards.”
‘Nothing New,’ but a Surprise to Some
Elham Shirazi, a Los Angeles telecommuting consultant, said the government agencies and companies she works with already understand that they are responsible for injuries that occur in home offices.
“This is nothing new,” Shirazi said. “Workers’ compensation does apply to employees when they work at home because the home becomes an extension of the office.”
Still, the advisory surprised many employers.
“I’m sure it would have a chilling effect on telecommuting” for many companies, said Keith Karpe, a spokesman for Fluor Corp., an engineering and construction services firm based in Aliso Viejo. “Every company, including Fluor, will look at this carefully and if necessary will revise their human resources policy toward telecommuting.”
That’s exactly the kind of reaction that worries Gail Martin, executive director of the International Telework Assn., which promotes telecommuting. The new OSHA interpretation could pose “one more barrier” to telecommuting among companies where inflexible managers are already biased against supervising employees who labor off-site.
“It seems that with everything we gain, a cure for this or a pill for that, new problems emerge,” Martin said.
Such fears are unfounded, said Jack Nilles, president of JALA International, a Brentwood-based workplace consulting firm that specializes in telecommuting. In the 27 years since Southern Californians pioneered the practice, “I have yet to hear of a single workers’ comp case brought by a telecommuter,” he said. “It’s sort of like the Y2K bug.”
Most well-run companies have already adopted formal “telework agreements” that clearly state the employer is responsible for work-related injuries that occur within a designated home work space, Shirazi said.
But even with legal documents in place, some workers simply don’t know what makes a work environment safe or unsafe, Martin said.
Inspections Not Required
OSHA officials made it clear they have no intention of conducting inspections at private homes the way they do at employer work sites. And they are not requiring employers to routinely inspect the home work sites of their employees. But the advisory does hold employers responsible for any illnesses or injuries that occur in the home workplace.
Any injuries that occur at the home work site must be reported on the employer’s injury log just as though they happened at the employer’s work site. Employers can be charged and fined by OSHA if they do not provide safe workplaces and employers are responsible for making any needed corrections.
OSHA officials said they aren’t particularly concerned about the state of an employee’s home outside the designated work site.
“An employer is responsible for ensuring that its employees have a safe and healthful workplace, not a safe and healthful home,” the advisory letter said.
There are some instances, however, where conditions in the home outside the work site could constitute a safety hazard the employer would be responsible for fixing. As an example, OSHA said, “If work is performed in the basement space of a residence and the stairs leading to the space are unsafe, the employer could be liable if the employer knows or reasonably should have known of the dangerous condition.”
The bottom line, according to the OSHA letter, is that when an employee works at home, “the employer is responsible for correcting hazards of which it is aware, or should be aware.”
The advisory was sent in mid-November but came to the attention of companies only in recent days.
Nilles, the telecommuting expert, said he doesn’t think the advisory will make employers want to end their telecommuting programs. Employees who work from home are more productive, and telecommuting has become an essential perk to help recruit and retain the best talent, he said. The California State Department of Justice, for instance, offers telecommuting to entice young attorneys who would otherwise work in private law firms at substantially higher salaries, he said.
Tim Fisher of the American Society of Safety Engineers said the OSHA letter would serve as a guideline for employers’ insurance carriers. Fisher predicted that most of the home work violations would be in the areas of ergonomics and indoor air quality.
Fisher said his association has received about 425 calls from members since the letter was issued. Many association members work for insurance firms that inspect home work sites to determine safety liabilities.
Several corporations contacted Monday said they were either unaware of the new guidelines or didn’t want to make a statement at this time.
Telecommuting consultant David Mead, president of TSI Services Inc. of Inglewood, said that he audited the telecommuting program at a major Fortune 500 company. He said he asked about 250 employees, all well-paid professionals, to provide photographs from five angles of their home workstations. He said he learned that many of the workers’ home offices were “grossly unsafe.”
Mead said one worker was saving money by using a wooden plank stretched across two filing cabinets of differing heights as a base for his personal computer. Many workers were so surrounded by piles of paper and books that it would be difficult to evacuate quickly if a fire broke out. Many were overloading the electrical circuits of older homes or were working in confined areas with no ventilation, posing the risk of a fire if any piece of equipment should overheat.
“Without a program that extends to the home, the company is not likely to know what is going on,” Mead said. “Ignorance has never been an acceptable excuse for an unsafe working environment.”
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Times staff writers Karen Kaplan, Stuart Silverstein and Don Lee contributed to this report.
