Workplace Rules Protect Home Office

Workplace Rules Protect Home Office

The Associated Press
Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2000; 5:45 p.m. EST

WASHINGTON –– Americans who work at home should expect to be covered by the same safety standards that apply in their companies' offices, says a federal advisory that outlines how traditional workplace protections affect the growing number of people who telecommute.

"Ensuring safe and healthful working conditions for the employee should be a precondition for any home-based work assignments," said the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The advisory came in a letter to a Texas-based credit services company that had sought advice about moving some of its sales executives into home offices.

In response, OSHA provided clear examples in an area that had been murky, even as the number of Americans regularly working at home has swelled to almost 20 million.

Such federal advisory letters to individual companies often are made public, and other businesses look to them for general guidance.

Labor Secretary Alexis Herman said Tuesday that in this case, the advice was intended for a specific company and should not be taken out of that context. However, she said, it raises questions that may eventually need to be addressed more broadly with new laws or regulations.

"I hope that for businesses that happen to see this letter that it does raise the important questions that we should be asking ... what are the new issues of the workplace of the future?" Herman said.

OSHA officials said Tuesday there has been no change in government policy and the agency will take no new action. There will be no government inspections of home offices, they said.

The agency did suggest, in its advisory, that companies should periodically inspect at-home workers' quarters themselves, as well as train people to set up safe home offices. Some large companies already have written safety agreements with or offered guidance to telecommuting employees.

Business groups that called attention this week to the OSHA action said it creates a greater legal burden on employers, which could have a chilling effect on at-home work arrangements.

"At a time when we want to provide a maximum amount of flexibility to workers, this new policy announcement just flies in the face of that," said U.S. Chamber of Commerce spokesman Frank Coleman.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, called OSHA's action "an outrageous extension of the Washington bureaucracy into the lives of working men and women across America."

Republican leaders had already vowed to scrutinize OSHA after Congress returns from its holiday break because of regulations the agency proposed in November that would require employers to minimize everyday physical – or "ergonomic" – stresses of certain jobs.

OSHA's advisory on at-home work – directed to CSC Credit Services of Houston, Texas, and dated Nov. 15 – said companies should provide necessary protective equipment and guidance against hazards that will ensure home offices are set up safely. An example of such a hazard, it said, is a computer that could overload electrical circuits in a residence and create a fire hazard.

According to the advisory, employers can be held liable if they know or should reasonably have known about home workplace hazards, even rickety stairs leading to a basement office that result in a fall.

Legal experts said if a fall were caused by a child's toy left on an otherwise safe stairway, that likely would be considered beyond a company's control.

Similarly, OSHA said companies aren't liable if a worker is injured in a home office while doing something other than working, such as eating lunch. Also, hazardous conditions elsewhere in the home are not the company's responsibility.

OSHA did not specifically address whether someone who works at home and is injured on the job would be entitled to normal workman's compensation.

That's implied, however, said AFL-CIO director of safety and health, Peg Seminario.

"Workers' comp coverage does follow the worker and would apply whether the employee is working at home or whether someone's at a fixed work site," Seminario said. "It's a matter of common sense that if you have people conducting extensive work at home, then the home essentially becomes a workplace."