Companies that allow employees to work at home -- even part-time -- are responsible for keeping conditions at those home work sites up to federal health and safety standards, according to a new Labor Department advisory.
The decision covers millions of people, "not only the estimated 19.6 million adult workers who regularly telecommute from their homes to their jobs, but also millions more who work at home occasionally -- even the parent who has to dash out of the office to be with a sick child and finishes a memo at home," The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Of course, OSHA sidesteps any requirement that such new rules be subject to public hearings or congressional approval by simply declaring the letter is "not a proposed rule, but rather a declaration of existing policy the agency deems already to be in effect."
"This is nuts. They're trying to match a 30-year-old law with a Year 2000 workforce," protests Pat Cleary, vice president of human resources policies at the National Association of Manufacturers. "The law doesn't contemplate everyone painting their (home) banisters yellow."
But Peg Seminario, health and safety director of the AFL-CIO, says she agrees with the policy spelled out in the new advisory. "It makes sense," she said. "Employers have to provide employees a workplace free from hazards."
Needless to say, OSHA was quick to assure all parties the agency has no intention of conducting inspections at private homes the way it does at employer work sites. They also insist the ruling will not (start ital)require(end ital) employers to routinely inspect the home work sites of their employees -- though (wink wink, nudge nudge) OSHA warns that employers should require home workers to certify they have first aid kits at hand, and also to file "emergency medical plans." Also, any injuries occurring at the home work site must now be reported on the employer's injury log just as though they'd happened at the employer's office or factory.
OSHA officials also insist they're not particularly concerned about the state of an employee's home outside the designated work site -- though the advisory letter offers as one example: "If work is performed in the basement space of a residence and the stairs leading to the space are unsafe, the employer could be liable if the employer knows or reasonably should have known of the dangerous condition."
In other words, all disclaimers aside, this is precisely a first extension of the government's slimy tentacles into the business of having (start ital)someone(end ital) inspect "home work stations," where everything from locked exit doors and heaps of papers (fire hazards, you understand) to the presence of smoking materials, "unsecured" self-defense firearms, and the kind of reading material or home hobby equipment that might raise a curious agent's eyebrow, will be duly noted.
(Furs and fancy cars? IRS might be interested. Bruises on the kids? Inform Child Protection. Hispanic nanny? Memo INS. Grow lights on the aquarium? Wonder what (start ital)else(end ital) they might be growing?)
Why? Labor unions and their pet Labor Department bureaucrats have fought for years against the "telecommuting" movement, identifying it with the old tradition of farming out "piecework" to home knitters -- a practice much harder to regulate and oversee than work in traditional, 19th-century factories.
Times have changed, of course. Salesmen and brokers and attorneys who e-mail work product to the office aren't generally recruiting their children to string beads for a nickel an hour. But government's urge to regulate and "rent-seek" never changes.
The bureaucrats have learned better than to (start ital)start(end ital) by threatening "mandatory government home inspections." But by holding employers responsible for making sure home work sites now have "ergonomically correct furniture, as well as proper lighting, heating, cooling and ventilation systems" (the Post) -- even leaving open the possibility of a workers' comp claim should a worker electrocute him or herself while doing the laundry barefoot during those hours when the home PC is "logged into the office" -- they clearly mean to make it either prohibitively expensive, or reminiscent of Orwell's "1984," for anyone to continue developing a new 21st century employment paradigm featuring flextime and cyber-commuting.
How ironic that this overdue breakdown of the long-outdated "9 o'clock factory whistle" mentality -- a boon to young working parents, particularly -- is now so fiercely resisted by the very "labor movement" which once claimed to hold workers' best interests at heart.
Republican leaders had already vowed to scrutinize OSHA after Congress returns from its holiday break, after the agency proposed new regulations requiring employers to spend billions making workplaces more "ergonomic" -- despite a lack of hard data that such redesign is likely to reduce injuries.
Adding this new "advisory" to the mix, it should now be clear to all that OSHA has gone completely nuts. If the engine of America's economic growth is to stay on track, Congress should contemplate a lot more than merely reining this agency in.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available at 1-800-244-2224.
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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