New OSHA initiative may make things worse for temporary workers, not better
By Jim Stanley
President, FDRsafety
When it comes to safety, it's long been established that temporary workers should be protected just like employees, but a new directive from OSHA on the subject could end up making the situation worse not better - both for companies and the temporary workers themselves.
While the OSHA directive announces a new initiative, the fact is that there is nothing new about the issue. Temporary workers were being used long before OSHA was founded and the agency has always had a common sense answer to the big question about protecting them - whose job is it? Should training and personal protective equipment be provided by the company who needs work done or by the company or agency supplying the workers?
The guidance OSHA has always supplied has been this:
If the company or agency supplying the temporary workers supervises them on the job, it is responsible for their safety. If, on the other hand, an agency merely supplies workers to a company which then directs their work, the agency is not responsible for their safety, the company using the workers is.
Pretty clear, right?
But OSHA has now muddied the waters by announcing a new initiative without reiterating guidance on that most basic question. That could leave companies confused about their responsibilities. At the same time it has issued a memo directing its inspectors visiting worksites to track hazards to temporary workers. That just adds more bureaucracy to a process that was pretty clear already.
It may be part of a larger campaign by the Department of Labor to be more aggressive on issues relating to temporary workers, according to InsideOSHAOnline.com.
"We're seeing some other activity on the temporary employee front at the Department of Labor," the publication quotes Eric Conn, head of the OSHA Group at Epstein Becker & Green, as saying. DOL agencies are "starting to scrutinize the treatment of temporary workers at the locations where they are working," he says.
Conn is quoted by InsideOSHAOnline.com as saying that legal challenges to the directive could be on the horizon.
So what should employers do in response to the OSHA directive?
Make sure that your training and equipment policies follow the common sense rule:
If you direct the activities of temporary workers, be sure to give them the same safety training and equipment you would provide to employees doing similar work. You owe it to them and yourselves.
Jim Stanley is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA. Contact him at jstanley@fdrsafety.com or (513) 317-5644.
| 
