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Today’s Headlines from Libertarian Sites Taxi A
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If the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration gets its way, the only way companies will be
able to allow employees to work from home is by subjecting them to invasive
spying by both the company and at some point the government itself.
Responding to a request for
a clarification of existing labor laws, OSHA recently issued a memo putting
employers on notice that they are responsible for ensuring that the homes
of telecommuters and others who work at home meet OSHA’s rigorous safety
standards. In its letter, OSHA said that in the case of employees who
work from home, “the employer is responsible for correcting hazards of
which it is aware, or should be aware.” Failing to do so could make the
employer liable for safety violations and injuries resulting from safety
violations.
This ruling is a classic example
of why the best thing to do with OSHA is to jettison it altogether and
start over. Currently over 20 million people regularly work from home
and certainly very few such workers could come close to meeting all of
OSHA’s numerous safety regulations. Companies are frequently cited, for
example, for failing to have Material Safety Data Sheets for common, but
dangerous, chemical products like White Out. I have never seen anyone
working at home post an MSDS or information on where to find an MSDS in
his home for the numerous dangerous chemicals often found in home offices.
OSHA says that the employer
is only responsible for the immediate area where work is performed, but
in fact it would require sweeping inspections since it requires that home
offices contain proper ventilation and emergency medical plans and equipment.
The obvious problem here is
that OSHA imposes a level of safety on businesses that few people choose
to maintain in their own homes. Most people are safety minded to a point
— they are willing to take basic, common sense steps to make their homes
safer but they are not prepared to go to the absurd levels of preparation
that OSHA requires businesses to go, because in large measure they are
rightly skeptical of the usefulness of such elaborate preparations. Most
people think they know what decent lighting in their home office is; they
don’t need OSHA stepping in with its silly regulations to dictate precise
levels of illumination, much less measure indoor air quality (will smoking
in the home office even be allowed? Would an employer down the road want
to run the risk of being held liable for letting an employee smoke at
his or her home office?)
The real losers in this decision
are the millions of Americans who are working from home. If this OSHA
regulation stands, many of their companies will decide the liability is
simply too great and begin scaling back their work-from-home opportunities.
Job arrangements that work well for both the employer and the employee
will be ended simply to satisfy OSHA’s obsession with going through the
motions of ensuring the “safety” of American workers.
Big government dictating from
above — there’s the real bug for Y2K.