March 2015 newsletter
- Temporary worker safety – Are you vulnerable?
- Employers: If you want to be sure your staffing agency is meeting safety requirements, we can help
Temporary worker safety – Are you vulnerable?
By Jim Stanley
President, FDRsafety
While using temporary workers can help companies maintain financial flexibility, organizations can face significant risks and vulnerability to OSHA enforcement without careful attention to providing those workers with adequate safety and health protection and training.
Employers are held to the same safety requirements for temporary workers as they are for regular employees, and OSHA is in the midst of an enforcement campaign to make sure employers are following through.
Because of confusion over who is responsible for meeting OSHA requirements, safety provisions for temporary workers can sometimes fall between the cracks, particularly when the workers have been supplied by a staffing agency. This is a particularly complex area because even though the employer and the staffing agency are jointly responsible for the safety and health of workers, the specific division of responsibilities can vary based on the situation.
It is very important to maintain clarity by specifying safety responsibilities in a contract between an employer and a staffing agency. OSHA recommends that the employer and the staffing agency each consider the hazards each of them are in a position to prevent and correct, and in a position to comply with OSHA standards. OSHA offers this possible scenario for division of responsibility: the staffing agency might provide general safety and health training, while the host employer might provide specific training tailored to the particular workplace equipment/hazards.
Another potentially tricky area is OSHA-required recordkeeping. The responsibility for recording the injury or illness on the OSHA log belongs to the party who supervises and controls the day-to-day work of the temporary employee.
OSHA offers these important points to remember:
- The key to success is communication between the staffing agency and the host employer to ensure that the necessary protections are provided. The staffing agency and host employer should establish notification procedures to ensure that when a worker informs one of an injury or illness, the other is notified.
- Staffing agencies have a duty to inquire into the conditions of their workers’ assigned workplaces. They must ensure that they are sending workers to a safe workplace.
- Ignorance of hazards is not an excuse.
- Staffing agencies need not become experts on specific workplace hazards, but they should determine what conditions exist at their client (host) agencies, what hazards may be encountered, and how best to ensure protection for the temporary workers.
- The staffing agency has the duty to inquire and verify that the host has fulfilled its responsibilities for a safe workplace.
- Host employers must treat temporary workers like any other workers in terms of training and safety and health protections.
Jim Stanley is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA. Contact Jim at jstanley@fdrsafety.com or 513-317-5644.
Employers: If you want to be sure your staffing agency is meeting safety requirements, we can help
OSHA views employers and staffing agencies as jointly responsible — partners of sorts — when it comes to the safety and health of temporary workers, yet staffing agencies are rarely experts on safety and health. That puts host employers in a potentially vulnerable position.
FDRsafety can help because we are safety and health experts and we work with your staffing agency to guide it on its responsibilities and to provide appropriate training to the workers they supply to your company.
We can also provide guidance to your company about how to appropriately divide responsibility for safety and health between you and the staffing agency.
Contact us for more information.