The death of telecommuting

Great Debates
1

The Washington Post reported today on a new OSHA policy that makes employers responsible for the safety of the home workplace. The article can be found here.

A few snippets from the article:

So not only is an employer now responsible for the safety of a worker’s home office, but for the points of ingress to the office as well?!

This policy seems to me like it could be the death knell for telecommuting. What employer would want to be responsible for fixing a work-at-home employee’s rickety staircase? Or mitigating radon in a basement office? Or providing a fire escape from a cramped attic office? Or providing an ergonomically-correct chair and desk (as mandated by another recent OSHA decision) for an employee’s home? Or provide heating for a drafty add-on? The list could go on and on.

From what I gather, all an employee has to do is mention an unsafe home working environment and the employer is obligated to fix the problem or face OSHA penalties.

This is absurd. I’m all for a safe working environment that my employer provides, but to expect the same things when I choose to work at home is ludicrous.

Rather than comply, I imagine most employers will cut off any telecommuting option for their employees.

What think the Teaming Millions?

~ Complacency is far more dangerous than outrage ~

2

I think it sounds like wanting to eat one’s cake and have it, too. A perfect example of the kind of stupid laws that make the good ones look bad as well.

“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather

3

Ye gods, that’s stupid!

(Sorry, nothing more really to add. What else is there to say?)

4

What more can be said? Plenty, here ya go, David.

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Easy one-step assembly instructions.
Pour Beer A in Uncle B.

5

Thanks, Unc! :slight_smile:

6

UncleBeer,

Come down off that damn fence and take a stand, man! You’re being pretty ambiguous, you know.

You seem to feel pretty strongly about the issue, and I just hate not knowing quite where you stand.

~ Complacency is far more dangerous than outrage ~

7

Apparently, he stands on a thesaurus. :wink:

8

Did you guys actually read and comprehend the article?..or is your response just a knee jerk?..

9

IT sounds to me what OSHA is saying is that they don’t intend to regulate these workplaces, and they don’t intend to treat them the same as a normal workplace, but that they will gladly fine the employer if an accident occurs at a home worksite.

Of course, state Work Comp law and not OSHA determine whether or not an employer is financially responsible for a worker’s injury.

Like other OSHA initiatives, it sounds fairly harmless, but has the potential for abuse. Angry employees can call OSHA and complain about hazardous conditions that they created in their own homes and have their employer cited.

10

Well, I’m glad to have someone to debate this topic with, even if it is the newest iteration of He Who Shall Not Be Named…

Krispy, what exactly leads you to believe that neither I, nor DavidB, UncleBeer, or pldennison read the article? The fact that we’ve drawn from it different conclusions than you seem to have?

Since you’ve made no arguments on your own behalf, I will respond instead to the article excerpts you posted.

  1. I think formal “memorandums of agreement” between employers and employees are an excellent idea. Every worker is entitled to know just what it is his/her workplace expects. It is the government intrusion, the I’m-doing-this-for-your-own-good mentality, that disturbs me.

  2. I’m delighted OSHA stopped short of conducting safety inspections at home. I’m also pleased that it will not require employers to conduct such inspections. However, inspections or no, employers are still to be held liable if an employee is working in an unsafe environment and gets injured. In a way, given the fact that employers are now to be held liable for safety violations in private homes, requiring inspections might almost have been preferable. That way, at least a company would know exactly what the problems are and could take proactive steps to fix them.

  3. So employees work in unsafe, uncomfortable, and possibly even dangerous situations at home. What business is this of the federal government? It is the employee’s choice to work in such conditions. Why should the employer be held accountable for its workers’ decisions? If an employee were forced to work at home in unsafe conditions, that would be quite a different matter. But that is simply not the case here.

~ Complacency is far more dangerous than outrage ~

11

Well…I think that you are exagerating.

“The death of telecommuting”

How freaking melodramatic!

This policy might turn out to be a good thing. The article that you supplied provided documentation of unsafe at-home work environments…so they do in fact exist…on the other hand, you nor your cronies have supplied ANY proof of why this policy will be detrimental.

12

Okay, K.O. Here’s one that will even fit your paranoid conspiracy fantasies.

It looks to me like the gov’t. could misuse this tool to invade and search your home without a court ordered search warrant. How’s that?

Easy one-step assembly instructions.
Pour Beer A in Uncle B.

13

Am I seeing things, or is Krispy calling out the skeptics for believing too easily a media report? Are you sure this isn’t the esrever thread?

I’m glad the Left Behinders came to this site, cuz’ I’m gonna need some popcorn and root beer for this.

::munch, munch, glug glug::

Jesus saves… Gretzky grabs the rebound… He Scores!

14

Sorry, Manny. No food allowed here in Great Debates – it’s all confiscated at the door from MPSIMS to here.

15

I actually work with these type of issues on a daily basis. K.O… Here are some ideas why this is a bad idea:

  1. An employee lives in an old house with lead paint, asbestos, steep stairs, poor ventilation, no air cond. etc. THe employee can call OSHA, and get the company to pay for all of the changes.

  2. the hazards faced while working at home are no greater than the hazards faced while living at home. OSHA is meant to address increases in hazards caused by work conditions. This is punishing an employer for no increase in hazards and those that are out of their control.

  3. As an employer, we would not want to inspect the employees house because of liabilities involving discrinmination and invasion of privacy. But if we don’t inspect the house, then we can’t properly assess our exposure to future suits and fines. It costs a lot if we can’t reasonably anticipate future losses.

  4. A disgruntled employees can create their own hazard at home, claim a fake injury and get their employer fined.

  5. Increased immeasurable exposures involving home offices makes them undesireable to employers. Remember, since the ADA was put in place, employment of disabled workers has declined. These programs tend to cause more damage than they are intended to.

  6. IT si impossible to separate work exposure from home exposure if they occur in the same place. Let’s say a worker gets asbestosis from asbestos in their house. Did they get it from the 8 hours a day they are hoem and not working or the 8 hours a day they are home and working?
    Is that enough?

16

Ooh, one more. Say you smoke or engage in some otherwise hazardous activity and as a result you hurt a family member. Maybe you shoot a paperclip at your wife and poke out her eye.

You wer an employee at the time. YOur kids have lung cancer because of the hazard you created at work. OSHA says your employer is responsible for hazards at your home.

Looks like your employer just bought a lawsuit.

17

Actually, this whole thing is being blown out of proportion.

I watched ABC Nightly News tonight and the head of OSHA reported that the policy statement being bandied about was in response to the inquiries of 1 (one) Texas company (CSC I believe)…

Some of the examples you folks are giving are freaking ridiculous…the cigarette smoking/lung cancer thing and the paperclip shooting examples are figments of your imagination and are not currently a problem at the traditional office OR the at-home office.

What can be gleaned here is that at-home employees are as protected under Workmans Compensation claims as are traditional employees and insofar as employers are expected to take reasonable measures to ensure a safe work environment for traditional employees, they also need to be sensitive to the environment of at-home employees. Now we get into negligence and the arguments of what constitutes something that the employer reasonably should have or could have known about and corrected versus the unforeseen and negligent things an at-home worker could do to harm themselves.

Using some of the goofy logic you guys are using, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some stupid, “I swallowed a gallon of bleach” examples used to try to back your obviously weak positions…

If this is the best you guys can bring to the debate, maybe you should go back to the LBMB where the quary are more your speed.

18

Krispy, the problem is not so much lawsuits as it is potential lawsuits. American corporations are extremly skittish about litigation, even spurious litigation, because it can be very expensive. Therefore, as a result of these new OSHA regulations many employers will nix telecommuting “just to be on the safe side.”

19

These are not new regulations.

This is a policy statement from OSHA in response to an inquiry from a Texas-based company…period.

This was merely a created story on a slow news day…

20

Krispy, traces of the Old Bad Person are starting to show through in your debating style. Please keep him locked up tight and out of sight. Remember, we’re here to attack or defend an idea - not each other. So please cut the ad hominem attacks.

With that said, I think Manda JO pretty well sums up my argument. I’m not really concerned about abuses of this new policy because I don’t believe many employers will ever allow abuses to come of it. The only sure way to prevent abuses, of course, is to eliminate telecommuting as an option.

You said,

Exactly! The very fact that a home office may well be unsafe is precisely why I feel many employers will eliminate telecommuting as an option. Now that an employer is to be held responsible for the safety of an employee’s home (actual office space, ingress and egress points as well), why on earth would the corporation still choose to let an employee work there???

Look at it this way: you are the founder of, say, a telemarketing firm. You have gone to considerable expense to build a modern office full of the phones, phone lines, computers, and other office equipment you need to get the job done. You have built the office to specifications, obeying all applicable local, state, and federal requirements. Every hoop that OSHA has set up, you have jumped through - and it has cost you a considerable amount of money.

Now let’s say one of your workers is seven months pregnant. She has trouble getting to work, but cannot, for financial reasons, afford to take time off. After all, she can barely afford the mortgage on the run-down, turn-of-the-century house she lives in. But being the magnanimous guy you are, you agree to her request to telecommute. She has a computer and phone at home and promises to fulfill her daily quota of calls.

Everything works fine for you. Because you’ve allowed this employee to work from her home, you’ve kept a worker you otherwise would have lost. True to her word, she stays productive and it hasn’t cost you a dime.

But now you learn of the new OSHA policy. You’re well aware from this lady’s many stories that she lives in a place just shy of a slum. There are safety hazards galore, including aluminum wiring, a rickety staircase, a loose chandelier, balky steam radiators, an unstable foundation, and poor ventilation.

Now what do you do, Krispy? You’ve already spent millions assuring that your own building satisfies OSHA’s requirements. Do you now do the same for this lady’s home? How about the next worker that asks to telecommute? And the next one? And the next one?

I hope you can see that the most logical course of action from a fiscal standpoint - indeed the only possible action - is to simply eliminate telecommuting as an option for any employee.

~ Complacency is far more dangerous than outrage ~