State and Local Health and Safety Laws

Many states and municipalities have laws that mandate a certain level of safety in the workplace. These laws vary greatly in what they require, how they are enforced, and even which employers they cover.

Early on, California began enforcing the most powerful of these laws: It requires every employer in the state to have a written plan to prevent workplace injuries. A number of states have followed the lead, putting teeth and nails into the laws that protect workplace safety. For example, Texas maintains a 24-hour hotline for telephone reports of violations—and prohibits employers from discriminating against workers who drop a dime to use it.

1. State OSHA Laws

Most states now have their own OSHA laws—most with protections for workers that are similar to those provided in the federal law. For example, employers in some low-hazard industries, such as retailers and insurance companies with fewer than ten employees, are exempt from some posting and reporting requirements. Most state laws cover all small employers, regardless of the type of business.

A number of states that do not now have OSHA laws in place are presently considering passing them—and many of the states that already have such laws are considering wholesale amendments changing their coverage and content. Check your state’s particulars with a local OSHA office—or call the state department of labor to check whether your state has enacted an OSHA law recently.

A number of state laws specifically forbid employers from firing employees who assert their rights under workplace health and safety rules. Some states, like OSHA, give workers the right to refuse to work under certain conditions, although the workers may need to report the condition first. And some states protect workers from retaliation not only for exercising their rights under OSHA, but also for using state “right to know” laws—statutes that require employers to give workers information about hazardous substances on the job.

Still another group of state laws extends beyond the workplace to protect employees who report violations of laws and rules that create specific dangers to public health and safety. These laws, commonly referred to as whistleblower statutes, generally protect good eggs—individuals who are attempting to uphold a public policy of the state. For example, typical whistleblower statutes prohibit employees from being fired for reporting toxic dumping or fraudulent use of government funds.

The Knock That Never Comes

If you happen upon an OSHA official who is feeling chatty and loose-tongued, you may hear what we all suspected: There simply are not enough inspectors to go around inspecting. Perhaps the jobs are hard to fill—OSHA inspectors nestle among IRS auditors on most employers’ lists of unwelcome visitors.

Restricted budgets may be a problem, too—the agency has been forced to set staff levels low and keep them there.

All this makes for lax enforcement. For example, there are only about 250 inspectors on the California OSHA staff available to monitor businesses and dole out citations for failing to comply with the state’s comprehensive law requiring health and safety plans for every employer in the state.

And California is a big state. Chamber of Commerce officials there recently estimated that if all the inspectors started at the state’s Oregon border and worked their way south through every business, it would take at least 300 years to reach Mexico.

2. Sanitation Laws

Many state and local health and building codes offer guidance in how to keep your workplace safe. While not intended specifically to ensure workplace safety, these laws often include programs designed to ensure good sanitation and public safety in general.

For example, the health department of the city in which you work probably has the power to order an employer to improve restroom facilities that are leaking and causing unsanitary workplace conditions. And your local building inspector typically can order an employer to straighten out faulty electrical wiring that presents a shock or fire hazard to people working near that wiring.

When the Boss Doubles as a Bathroom Monitor

It wasn’t big news to many when government health authorities recently slapped a $332,500 fine on Hudson Foods, a poultry processing plant in the town of Noel, Missouri. The plant had been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 23 times in 24 years—a healthy number for an agency notoriously backlogged and selective in carrying out its charge of ferreting out workplace health and safety violations.

A number of news sources dutifully recounted the parade of transgressions OSHA inspectors had noted: blocked and restricted fire exits, failure to provide training in and enforce use of eye protective equipment, failure to provide training and issue procedures for handling hazardous chemicals, failure to securely anchor machines.

Less widely reported was one innocuous sounding violation: Insufficient Toilet Facilities. The charge drew at least a few glib jibes: “Let My People Go,” trumpeted one legal journal in a headline thumbnailing the inspection.

But few could fathom the human humiliation behind it all. Hudson workers claim they were required to ask permission before being allowed bathroom breaks—and that permission was denied as often as granted. Some say they were forced to urinate in their clothes or wear diapers to absorb the inevitable. Thom Hanson, chief regulatory compliance officer at Hudson, defended the company’s position: The workers simply “need to ask supervisors to release them,” he explained. “Normally, a relief person comes by and takes their place.”

But relief was not always in sight, according to one woman who worked five years as a packer at Hudson. “It matters how good you get along with your supervisor. Sometimes they’ll say no,” she said. “And it’s pretty hard to leave the line when you’ve got thousands of chickens coming at you.”

OSHA regulations have long required that employers provide toilets in the workplace: at least six for the first 150 workers, and one more for each additional 40 workers. But in a twist of semantics defying logic, the regulations mandate only the presence of toilets on the scene—not employees’ rights to use them. In considering the Hudson complaints, OSHA officials found for the first time that the company in effect denied workers toilet facilities when it denied them the right to use them.

In the wake of the Hudson case and the ensuing public outcry, OSHA officials dictated at last that employers must give workers prompt and reasonable access to toilet facilities, even though the regulations do not specifically require it.

An official Standards and Compliance Letter issued by OSHA noted: “Toilets that employees are not allowed to use for extended periods cannot be said to be ‘available’ to those employees.”

In other words, employers can no longer hide behind the lacking letter of the law. Employers who do not allow employees reasonable access to workplace toilets may now be cited and sanctioned by OSHA inspectors.

You can find state and local health and building codes at your city hall or county courthouse.