Along with assigning your workplace safety responsibilities, the General Duty Clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act gives employees numerous safety rights.
Employees have the right to:
Work in a safe and healthful environment. Under the General Duty Clause, employees have the right to a safe and healthful workplace free from hazards that could seriously injure them, make them seriously ill, or kill them.
Know about chemical hazards. Under the Hazard Communication Standard, your workers have the right to know about hazardous chemicals in the workplace and how to protect themselves from harmful exposures.
Find out about injuries and illnesses. Employees have the right to information about injuries and illnesses in the workplace. You are required to keep records of this information and share it with employees upon request and by posting the Annual Summary (OSHA Form 300A) in February.
Make complaints and requests. Employees have the right to express to their concerns about unsafe conditions to you and request hazard correction.
Receive training. Workers have the right to training to teach them how to work safely and avoid work-related accidents, injuries, and illness.
Think you have no time to train? Think again. BLR’s 7-Minute Safety Trainer helps you fulfill key OSHA-required training tasks in as little as 7 minutes. Try it at no cost and see!
Review hazard exposure and medical records. Your employees have the right to review your records identifying hazard exposures. They also have the right to look at their own work-related medical records, such a records of medical surveillance programs required by OSHA.
File OSHA complaints. Employees have the right to file a complaint with OSHA about workplace hazards that you have failed to correct.
Participate in OSHA inspections. Workers have the right to participate in an OSHA inspection and talk privately to inspectors about workplace conditions and hazards.
Be free of retaliation. Employees have the right to exercise safety and health rights without fear of reprisal. As we said in yesterday’s Advisor, you can’t take any adverse employment action against whistleblowers.
Refusal to Perform Dangerous Tasks
Workers also have a limited right to refuse to do a job because conditions are hazardous. They may only do so when three conditions are met:
- They believe they face imminent death or serious injury (and the situation is so clearly hazardous that any reasonable person would believe the same thing);
- They have tried to get you to eliminate the danger, and you failed to do so; and
- The situation is so urgent that there is not enough time to eliminate the hazard through regulatory channels, such as calling OSHA.
Furthermore, the refusal must be made in “good faith.” It can’t be a disguised attempt to harass you or disrupt business.
Can you picture safety training in effective, 7-minute sessions? Get the details.
E-Z Training at a Phenomenal Price
To help train employees in a broad range of safety and health topics, including their OSHA rights, savvy safety professionals have for years relied on the BLR 7-Minute Safety Trainer. This essential training resource allows you to provide concise, memorable training easily and effectively in just a few minutes. Materials are ready-to-use, and each session supplies a detailed trainer’s outline as well as a handout, quiz, and quiz answers to get your points across quickly—and cost-effectively.
All told, this “trainer’s bible” contains 50 prewritten meetings covering almost every aspect of safety you’d want or need to train on, in a format designed to be taught in as little as 7 minutes. Major topics include:
- Confined spaces
- Electrical safety
- Fire safety and emergency response
- HazCom
- Machine guarding and lockout/tagout
- Material handling
- PPE use and care
- Housekeeping/slips, trips, and falls
- and dozens more
Just make as many copies as you need of the included handouts and quizzes, and you’re ready to train.
Equally important is that the program ships new meetings every quarter to respond to new and changed regulations. This service is included in the program price, which averages just over $1 a working day. In fact, this is one of BLR’s most popular safety programs.
If you’d like to personally evaluate 7-Minute Safety Trainer and see how it can build safety awareness, we’ll be happy to send it to you for 30 days on a no-cost, no-obligation trial basis. Just let us know, and we’ll arrange it.
PingBack from http://savant7.com/workaccidentreport/workplace-safety/dont-get-on-the-wrong-side-of-employee-safety-rights/