If you believe that your workplace is unsafe, your first action should be to make your supervisor at work aware of the danger as soon as possible. If your employer has designated a particular person or department as responsible for workplace safety, inform the appropriate person of the danger.
In general, your complaint will get more attention if you present it on behalf of a group of employees who all see the situation as a safety threat. And, as for filing a complaint, there is safety in numbers. An employer who becomes angry over a safety complaint is much less likely to retaliate against a group of employees than against an individual.
1. Filing a Complaint
If you have not been successful in getting your company to correct a workplace safety hazard, you can file a complaint at the nearest OSHA office. Look under the U.S. Labor Department in the federal government section of your local telephone directory or find them on the agency’s website at www.osha.gov under About OSHA.
You can request the proper complaint forms from any OSHA office. You also have the option of telephoning your complaint to your nearest OSHA office, where a compliance officer will complete the paperwork and then send you the completed version for your approval and signature. For more information about filing a complaint and to file one online, go to OSHA’s Workers’ Page at www.osha.gov/as/opa/worker/index.html.
If you request it, OSHA must keep confidential your identity and that of any other employees involved in the complaint. If you want your identity to be kept secret, be sure to check the section on the complaint form that states: “Do not reveal my name to the employer.”
Once you have completed the complaint form, file it with the nearest OSHA office. You can do this in person, but if you send it in by certified mail, you will have proof that OSHA received it should it get mislaid in OSHA’s offices. Keep a photocopy of your completed complaint form for your own files.
Upon receiving your complaint, OSHA will assign a compliance officer to investigate your case. The compliance officer will likely talk with you and your employer and inspect the work conditions that you have reported.
| Caution | Time off under the FMLA. If your workplace injury requires an extended recovery at home or in a hospital, state and federal leave laws may not only protect your right to take time off work but require that you be returned to your former position with continued insurance benefits. |
2. How Complaints Are Resolved
A compliance officer who finds that the condition about which you complained poses an immediate danger to you and your coworkers can order your employer to immediately remove the danger from the workplace—or order the workers to leave the dangerous environment.
Where the danger is particularly urgent or the employer has a record of violations, OSHA may get tough by asking the courts to issue an injunction—a court order requiring the employer to eliminate workplace hazards.
A group of pipeline workers complained to OSHA that the earth walls of the excavation in which they were working were not well supported and could collapse on them. The OSHA compliance officer tried unsuccessfully to talk the employer into improving the situation. OSHA obtained a court injunction forbidding work to continue within the excavation until the walls were shored up with steel supports.
If the danger is less immediate, the compliance officer will file a formal report on your complaint with the director of OSHA for your region. If the facts gathered by the compliance officer support your complaint, the regional director may issue a citation to your employer.
The citation will specify what work conditions must be changed to ensure the safety of the employees, the timetable that OSHA is allowing for those changes to be made—usually known as an abatement plan—and any fines that have been levied against your employer.
Leslie is a machine operator in an old woodworking shop that uses lathes that throw a large quantity of wood dust into the air inside the shop. The wood dust appeared to be a hazard to the employees who breathe it, and Leslie was unsuccessful in resolving the problem with the shop’s owner. She filed a complaint with OSHA.
OSHA studied the air pollution in the shop and agreed that it was a threat to workers’ health. It ordered the shop’s owner to install enclosures on the lathes to cut down on the amount of dust put into the air and filter-equipped fans throughout the shop to capture any wood dust that escaped from the enclosures. Because the lathe enclosures and fans needed to be custom-designed and installed, OSHA allowed the shop’s owner six months to correct the situation.
In the meantime, OSHA ordered the shop’s owner to immediately provide Leslie and all the other people employed there with dust-filtering masks to wear over their mouths and noses. However, since OSHA regulations generally require employers to make the workplace safe and not just protect workers from an unsafe work situation, the masks were considered merely a temporary part of the long-term abatement plan.
An OSHA inspector who finds a workplace safety hazard or other violation will tell all affected employees about it and post a danger notice before leaving the workplace. This public notice of an unsafe condition is often the impetus an employer needs to take it seriously and correct it.
| Caution | The importance of being specific. Like many other government agencies, OSHA is a huge bureaucracy that is organized and operated according to computerized file numbers. The best way to get prompt service and accurate information from OSHA is to be as specific as possible. In your dealings with OSHA, be sure to mention the name of the company, the department of that company, the number assigned to the complaint that you are tracking, and the date on which it was filed. Jot down the names and numbers of those with whom you speak. And keep detailed notes of your conversations, complete with dates and times. |
3. Contesting an Abatement Plan
You have the right to contest an abatement plan directed to your employer by OSHA to correct a workplace hazard—for example, if you feel the suggested plan is insufficient. To do so, send a letter expressing your intent to contest the plan to your local OSHA director within 15 days after the OSHA citation and announcement of the plan is posted in your workplace. You need not list specific reasons for contesting the plan in this letter; all you need to make clear is that you think the plan is unreasonable.
April 10, 20XX
Ms. Mary Official
Regional Director
Occupational Safety and Health
Administration
321 Main Street
Anycity, USA 12345
Dear Ms. Official:
As allowed by 29 U.S.C. Section 659(e), I wish to contest the abatement plan agreed to by your agency and my employer, the Oldtime Mousetrap Company. This abatement program resulted from a complaint that I filed with your office on April 3, 20XX. That complaint was assigned number A-123456 by your office.
I contest this agreement because I believe that it is unreasonable.
Sincerely,
Elmer Springmaker
456 Central Road
Anycity, USA 12340
123-555-5555
| Caution | There really is strength in numbers. If other employees feel the abatement plan is unfair or insufficient, encourage them to register their protests with OSHA as well. |
After it receives your letter, OSHA will refer the matter to the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission in Washington, D.C., an agency independent of OSHA. That commission will send your employer a notice that the abatement plan is being contested.
This notice will order the employer to post in the workplace an announcement that the plan is being contested. It will also require the employer to send a form that certifies the date on which that announcement was made back to the commission—with copies to OSHA, to you, and to other employees who have contested the plan.
Then, everyone involved in the case has ten days from the date the contest notice was posted to file an explanation of their viewpoints on the abatement plan with the commission. Copies must also be sent to all others involved in the case.
4. Administrative Review
When attempts to reach a resolution are unsuccessful, the commission submits the case to an administrative law judge. These proceedings usually take several months—and sometimes years—depending upon the complexity of the workplace hazards involved.
Hearings before administrative law judges are very much like a trial. Much time and money can be consumed in gathering evidence, and the hearings are usually scheduled during daytime hours, when most employees are at work. You will probably have to hire a lawyer to help if you decide to pursue your safety complaint at this level.
You also have the right to appeal a decision by an administrative law judge for the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission to the full commission or in federal court, but you will probably have to hire a lawyer to help you at these levels as well.
5. Walking Off the Job
OSHA gives you the right to refuse to continue doing your job in extreme circumstances that represent an immediate and substantial danger to your safety.
This right is limited. You cannot walk off the job and be protected by OSHA in just any workplace safety dispute—and this tactic cannot be used to protest general working conditions. But OSHA rules give you the right to walk off the job without being discriminated against later by your employer if the situation is a true workplace safety emergency.
A walk-off will be legally merited only if your situation meets all of the following conditions:
-
You asked your employer to eliminate the hazard and your request was ignored or denied. To protect your rights, it would be best to tell more than one supervisor about the hazard or to call the danger to the attention of the same supervisor at least twice—preferably in front of witnesses.
-
You did not have time to pursue normal OSHA enforcement channels. In most cases, this means that the danger must be something that came up suddenly and is not a safety threat that you allowed to go unchallenged for days, weeks, or months.
-
Staying on the job would make a reasonable person believe that he or she faced a threat of serious personal injury or death because of the workplace hazard. If the hazard is something that you can simply stay away from—such as a malfunctioning machine in a work area that you do not have to enter—it probably would not qualify as creating an emergency.
-
You had no other reasonable alternative to refusing to work, such as asking for a reassignment to another area.
Example
Mike is a welder in a truck building plant. Shortly after starting work one day, he noticed that a large electrical cable running along the plant’s ceiling had broken overnight, was coming loose from the hardware attaching it to the ceiling, and was dangling closer and closer to the plant floor. He and several of his coworkers immediately told their supervisor about the broken cable, but the supervisor did nothing about it. The group also told the supervisor’s boss about the danger, but still nothing was done to correct it.
By about 11 a.m., the broken cable had dropped to the point where it was brushing against the truck body that Mike was welding. Sparks flew each time the cable and the truck body touched. Because he had a reasonable fear that an electrical shock transmitted from the broken cable could seriously injure or kill him, Mike walked off the job. His supervisor fired him for leaving work without permission. But, because the danger fit OSHA’s definitions of an emergency, OSHA ordered the company to reinstate Mike to his job with back wages—after first repairing the broken and dangling cable.
If you use the extreme option of walking off a job because of a safety hazard, be sure to contact your nearest OSHA office as soon as you are out of danger. Call the agency’s emergency reporting number: 800-321-6742. Jot down the name of the OSHA officer with whom you speak—and also note the time that you report the hazard. That will preserve your right to be paid back wages and other losses from the time that the hazard forced you to walk away from work.
6. Penalties for Retaliation
Under OSHA, it is illegal for an employer to fire or otherwise discriminate against you for filing an OSHA complaint or participating in an OSHA investigation. OSHA can order an employer who violates this rule to return you to your job and to reimburse you for damages—including lost wages, the value of lost benefit coverages, and the cost of searching for a new job. A number of state laws also protect against retaliation for reporting workplace health and safety violations.
0 comments:
Post a Comment