OSHA Drops Home Office Safety Order
Amid outcries from business groups and conservatives fearing the government might start poking around workers’ homes, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman on Wednesday withdrew a directive that employers are responsible for health and safety problems in home offices.
But work-at-home advocates worry that lingering confusion over policies at the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration could slow the growth of telecommuting, now practiced by an estimated 19 million-plus Americans at thousands of companies.
The directive came in a letter sent by OSHA to a subsidiary of Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo on Nov. 15 and posted on the Labor Department’s Web site, but the contents became widely known only in the last few days through news reports.
The letter to CSC Credit Services details existing OSHA policy in response to several questions that the company had asked more than two years earlier as it planned to allow several sales executives to work from home offices.
OSHA told CSC that “all employers, including those which have entered into ‘work at home’ agreements with employees, are responsible for complying with the [Occupational Safety and Health] Act and with safety and health standards.” The letter said employers may need to inspect home work sites.
“This letter has caused widespread confusion and unintended consequences for others,” Herman said at a news conference. The advisory was intended to answer one employer’s questions and was not meant to be a broad policy statement, she said.
However, Herman noted, OSHA continues to require companies to make sure that all employees work in “safe and healthful conditions,” no matter where they toil, and called for a series of meetings with business and labor as well as an interagency task force to study these issues.
“Given the changing nature of work in the 21st century, we need to determine what are the new rules of the road,” Herman said.
The original OSHA directive drew an angry response from business groups, telecommuting advocates and Republican politicians who saw unwarranted intrusion by an increasingly activist OSHA under Administrator Charles Jeffress. And the withdrawal, which Herman insisted did not signal a change in policy, although applauded, was considered a political reaction to the firestorm.
“Someone didn’t think through that this had repercussions far more than realized,” said Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “It’s a rare, but welcome, event when government regulators realize they have overstepped the bounds of reason.”
Peg Seminario, health and safety director for the AFL-CIO, said the union considers the controversy to be positive because “issues have been raised here that have not been addressed and need to be.”
Although pleased that this week’s controversy has raised awareness about employers’ responsibilities for protecting telecommuters, home-based business consultant Paul Edwards worries that some companies will now be reluctant to offer their employees the work-at-home option, fearing the hassle or potential liability.
“It could have a chilling effect, particularly among small companies that simply don’t have the human resources departments and bureaucracy to deal with these issues,” said Edwards, co-author of “Working From Home.”
“It might make independent contracting all the more attractive to smaller businesses that want to avoid liability for their employees’ premises,” Edwards said.
The push to telecommute usually comes from workers, said Jeffrey C. McGuiness, president of LPA, a Washington-based lobbying group representing 250 major employers. “For those companies that are kind of reluctant for employees to telecommute in the first place, this would be the perfect excuse not to do it.”
The OSHA flap has thrust Computer Sciences Corp. into the spotlight. The computer systems integrator, which boasts a global work force of 54,000, wrote to OSHA in 1997 to clarify its responsibilities regarding home workplace safety for 10 telecommuters at its Houston credit services division.
“It was just one guy [in our Houston subsidiary] trying to get out ahead on this issue,” said company spokesman Frank Pollare. “We had no idea it would become a lightning rod two years later.”
Pollare could not say how many of CSC’s 32,000 U.S. employees now work at home, but he said OSHA’s slow interpretation and quick about-face have not dissuaded the company from allowing more employees to telecommute.
“From a business standpoint, it has proved really efficient for us,” he said. “We’re going to continue doing it, guided by practical thinking and common sense. But we would hope at some point this whole issue generates some new guidelines from OSHA.”
But that’s precisely what has some business groups worried.
Mary Leon, manager of legislative affairs for Washington-based National Federation of Independent Business, fears a whole new layer of government intrusion if OSHA is allowed to develop detailed rules governing home workplace safety.
“We’ll be pushing for a voluntary approach,” Leon said. “We need employers and employees figuring out what works . . . not fines and citations and government mandates.”
New Jersey telecommuting consultant Gil Gordon called this week’s firestorm over OSHA’s interpretation “a tempest in a teapot,” because employers have known for decades that they bear some responsibility for ensuring their workers’ safety outside company walls.
In 17 years of advising companies on how to set up telecommuting programs, Gordon says he can only recall two instances in which an employee filed a workers’ compensation claim for an injury sustained in the home workplace--”and neither one of them held up,” he said.
That kind of track record makes it unlikely that home workplaces will become magnets for OSHA inspectors, he said. Likewise, most employees view telecommuting as a privilege and would be unlikely to file frivolous complaints or lawsuits that would jeopardize that flexibility, Gordon said. He says many home workers already are undergoing training, installing recommended equipment and submitting their home offices to safety inspection at the request of employers.
Because employees are driving the work-at-home movement to give themselves more time with their families, many view it as a privilege and would be unlikely to file frivolous lawsuits that would jeopardize their flexibility, Gordon said. In fact, many workers are willing to undergo training, install special equipment and submit their home offices to inspections by their employers, Gordon said.
“Those selected to be telecommuters are among the best and brightest workers. They understand it and want to protect their privileges,” he said. “All this will have a happy ending if it raises the kind of awareness that we need to give employers and employees the tools they need to deal with these issues.”
