Another
Wildchild
12.SafetyandHealth.pptxSafety and Health
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Going Postal is Just Part of the Story….
An employer’s first responsibility is to provide workers with a safe and healthy workplace…
Various factors have caused an unparalleled demand for workplace safety. Among them are frequent job changes, decreased unionization, immigration, population expansion, and technological changes.
Prevention of workplace fatalities, injuries, and illness (WFII) is of primary concern to public managers.
In addition to the personal pain and suffering caused by these incidents, they cost employers billions of dollars annually.
These include not only the direct cost of reduce productivity but also the hidden cost of
sick leave,
employer payments for disability and worker’s compensation insurance,
and the cost of processing or contesting employees’ claims for disability retirement or worker’s compensation benefits.
Please Note:
1) Health and safety are a sanction-related issue;
2) The subject is a development-related issue because there is increasing evidence that healthy employees are more productive and happy than unhealthy ones;
3) Because of the increasing cost of health care, health and safety are an allocation or planning issue for the employer.
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The legal Framework for Workplace Safety and Health…
The legal framework for workplace safety involves:
Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA);
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA);
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FML);
Certain issues posed by independent contractors and health-care professionals.
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The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970
The Occupational Safety and Health Act is the primary federal law which governs occupational health and safety in the private sector and federal government in the United States.
Its main goal is to ensure that employers provide employees with an environment free from recognized hazards, such as exposure to toxic chemicals, excessive noise levels, mechanical dangers, heat or cold stress, or unsanitary conditions.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is an agency of the United States Department of Labor.
Congress established the agency under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which President Richard M. Nixon signed into law on December 29, 1970.
OSHA's mission is to "assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education and assistance".
The agency is also charged with enforcing a variety of whistleblower statutes and regulations.
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Worker’s Compensation…
Workers' compensation is a form of insurance providing wage replacement and medical benefits to employees injured in the course of employment in exchange for mandatory relinquishment of the employee's right to sue his or her employer for the tort of negligence.
The tradeoff between assured, limited coverage and lack of recourse outside the worker compensation system is known as "the compensation bargain".
Unlike Medicare and Medicaid, “workers’ comp,” is regulated by sate laws with no Congressional oversight. Each state’s system compensates employees for job-related injuries and illnesses. While plans differ among jurisdictions, provision can be made for
weekly payments in place of wages (functioning in this case as a form of disability insurance),
compensation for economic loss (past and future),
reimbursement or payment of medical and like expenses (functioning in this case as a form of health insurance),
and benefits payable to the dependents of workers killed during employment (functioning in this case as a form of life insurance).
General damage for pain and suffering, and punitive damages for employer negligence, are generally not available in workers' compensation plans, and negligence is generally not an issue in the case. Unfortunately, this has led to an increase into two types of fraud:
Claimant fraud
Premium fraud…
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Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) is a law that was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1990. The ADA is a wide-ranging civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability.
It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal.
In addition, unlike the Civil Rights Act, the ADA also requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities, and imposes accessibility requirements on public accommodations.
ADA disabilities include both mental and physical medical conditions. A condition does not need to be severe or permanent to be a disability.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations provide a list of conditions that should easily be concluded to be disabilities:
deafness, blindness, an intellectual disability (formerly termed mental retardation), partially or completely missing limbs or mobility impairments requiring the use of a wheelchair, autism, cancer, cerebral palsy, diabetes, epilepsy, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and schizophrenia.
Other mental or physical health conditions also may be disabilities, depending on what the individual's symptoms would be in the absence of "mitigating measures" (medication, therapy, assistive devices, or other means of restoring function), during an "active episode" of the condition (if the condition is episodic).
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The Family and Medical Leave Act….
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) is a United States federal law requiring covered employers to provide employees job-protected and unpaid leave for qualified medical and family reasons.
Qualified medical and family reasons include:
personal or family illness,
family military leave,
pregnancy, adoption,
or the foster care placement of a child.
The FMLA was intended "to balance the demands of the workplace with the needs of families."
The Act allows eligible employees to take up to 12 work weeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period to attend to the serious health condition of the employee, parent, spouse or child, or for pregnancy or care of a newborn child, or for adoption or foster care of a child.
In order to be eligible for FMLA leave, an employee must
have been at the business at least 12 months,
and worked at least 1,250 hours over the past 12 months,
and work at a location where the company employs 50 or more employees within 75 miles.
The FMLA covers both public- and private-sector employees, but certain categories of employees are excluded, including elected officials and their personal staff members
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Emergent Issues Posed by Independent Contractors….
Two emergent and interrelated issues are going to affect employer’s ability to manage employee health and safety:
Working at home
Question: “So, as employee preferences and employer practice encourage more work at home, how will the lack of safety standards or enforcement affect employer responsibility for the cost of accident or sickness?”
Part-time work on the side…Moonlighting
Note: Employees injured (which includes psychological and environmental illnesses) while moonlighting often seek to claim worker’s comp coverage from their regular employer.
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Improving Workplace Health and Safety…
Improving unsafe or unhealthy working conditions is a legal requirement.
In addition, it is also a desirable policy to protect employees and their continued productivity.
Audits and Risk Assessment: Together with facilities managers and safety engineers, HR can correct unsafe facilities or working conditions with following:
Management Audits;
Compliance Audits;
Risk Assessments
Improving Job Design: A job that is alternately boring and stressful, or that the use of dangerous equipment, increases the risk to the employee.
Ergonomics can be a great tool in the designing of jobs to fit the physiological and psychological make-up of the worker.
Once designed the training program needs to be comprehensive yet specific to the job.
Feedback and Incentive Programs are reward programs for the employee and supervisor need to maintain a culture of occupational safety.
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Workplace Violence….
Workplace violence or occupational violence refers to violence, usually in the form of physical abuse or threat, that creates a risk to the health and safety of an employee or multiple employees
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2011, violence and other injuries caused by persons or animals contributed to 17% of all occupational fatalities, with homicides contributing to 10% of the total.
Examination of the 2011 data shows that while a majority of workplace fatalities occurred to males, workplace violence disproportionately affects females.
Homicides contributed to 21% of all occupational fatalities for women, compared to 9% for men.
Of these homicides, relatives or domestic partners contributed to 39% of female homicide cases; male homicide cases were most likely to be perpetrated by robbers, contributing to 36% of male homicide cases.
Most cases of workplace violence turns out to be non-fatal incidents. From 1993 to 1999, there was an average of about 1.7 million people victimized each year in a case of occupational violence.
About 75% of these cases are considered simple assault, while 19% of cases are considered aggravated assault.
OSHA and the Department of Justice classify victims of workplace violence as: Stranger violence; Client violence; and Employee violence.
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Workplace Violence and Public Employees
Public employees are at particular risk from client violence.
They must serve all segments of the population, including many who are:
mentally ill,
have convictions for violent crimes,
or are under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Further, they must enforce laws, rules, and policies that are unpopular.
Potentially violent “customers” are not inclined to distinguish between levels of government or types of agencies.
Besides clientele violence, domestic violence cost employers billions annually in lost productivity, increased health-care cost, absenteeism, and workplace violence.
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Employers’ Legal Liability for Employee Violence….
Employers may be reluctant to confront workplace violence because they fear that if they know that an employee is being abused and do nothing, they will be sued.
Nevertheless, this may happen in any event.
The Employer’s Paradox,
An employer is vicariously liable for the violent actions of it’s employees so as:
the employee is acting within the scope of their employment;
the employer authorized the employees action,
or the employer ratified the employee’s actions subsequent to the occurrence.
In addition the courts have also held employers liable to victims under the theory of negligent hiring, retention, and referral.
Please Note: Employers who attempt to screen job applicants for violent tendencies run the risk of violating an applicants’ civil rights…
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Employer Responses to Workplace Violence…
What precautions can employers take to protect themselves and their employees from workplace violence?
Make sure information about a potential new hire (gaps in employment, disciplinary actions, use of illegal drugs, and criminal records) are available to those making a hiring decision.
Employers (and employees) should have a zero tolerance policy that sets consequences for perpetrators of workplace violence.
Managers should be aware of the link between workplace violence and a deteriorating organizational culture.
If people communicated freely with each other and with management, threats will be reported more readily and agency values will be transmitted more clearly.
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Disaster Preparedness…
Since 9/11, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been responsible for national policies that involve hazards, natural disasters, man-made accidents, and terrorist incidents.
State and local governments have established offices of homeland security or reorganized their emergency management department to include this function.
In general, these changes have created an administrative structure in four areas:
Prevent terrorist incidents through coordination with other enforcement agencies;
Prepare and implement flexible plans to deal with a wide range of possible scenarios;
Develop (and train) personnel to respond effectively to these plans;
Ensure that they can continue to provide essential governmental services to the public.
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Tobacco, Alcohol, and Illegal Drugs…
Effects on Health, Safety, and Productivity…
Most public employers ban smoking in the workplace as a violation of employees’ right to a safe and healthy workplace.
The cost of alcohol abuse (and drug abuse) is high, measured in impaired performance, absenteeism, injuries, and fatalities…
Substance’ abuse also results in higher health insurance cost for employees.
Legal Requirements for employers…
Tobacco is legal. However most employers ban smoking in the workplace because of the health and liability issues raised by exposure to secondhand smoke.
Alcohol is legal and socially accepted. However, employers may be liable if employees are hurt or cause injury to others at organizational functions where alcohol is served.
The courts have upheld drug testing for cause when there was evidence of impaired performance or misconduct. So drug user’s beware…
Recommended Workplace polices and Practice…
The ultimate solution is education and changing the norms and values of the workplace through employee education programs.
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Aids and Other Life-Threatening Diseases…
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Following initial infection, a person may experience a brief period of influenza-like illness.
This is typically followed by a prolonged period without symptoms.
As the infection progresses, it interferes more and more with the immune system, making the person much more susceptible to common infections like tuberculosis, as well as opportunistic infections and tumors that do not usually affect people who have working immune systems.
The late symptoms of the infection are referred to as AIDS.
HIV is transmitted primarily via unprotected sexual intercourse (including anal and oral sex), contaminated blood transfusions, hypodermic needles, and from mother to child during pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding.
Common methods of HIV/AIDS prevention include encouraging safe sex, needle-exchange programs, and treating those who are infected.
There is no cure or vaccine; however, antiretroviral treatment can slow the course of the disease and may lead to a near-normal life expectancy.
Without treatment, the average survival time after infection with HIV is estimated to be 9 to 11 years, depending on the HIV subtype.
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Unanswered Questions
Does mandatory AIDS testing of employees in health-care agencies violate constitutional privacy protection?
Is testing prison inmates a civil rights violation?
Is it a violation of federal law for a company to reduce the health-care benefits of an employee with AIDS?
Does barring an HIV+ medical assistant from participating in surgery violate the ADA?
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Employee Wellness Programs ….
Workplace wellness is any workplace health promotion activity or organizational policy designed to support healthy behavior in the workplace and to improve health outcomes.
Generally speaking, health promotion is defined as "the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health," and health promotion can be carried out in the workplace as well as many other settings.
Known as Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs‘), it consists of a variety of activities such as health fairs, health education, medical screenings, healthy office snack delivery services, health coaching, weight management programs, wellness newsletters, on-site fitness programs and/or facilities and educational programs.
With more attention focused on nutrition and overall health, research is beginning to show a link between the nutrition and exercise of people in the workforce and how it affects overall productivity.
Even though wellness programs require investments up front, large companies should subsidize these programs because they will save companies money in the long run, improve overall workforce productivity, and enhance employee morale.
Workplace wellness comprises organizational policies designed to facilitate employee health including:
allowing flex time for exercise,
providing on-site kitchen and eating areas,
offering healthy food options in vending machines,
holding “walk and talk” meetings,
and offering financial and other incentives for participation, among many other options.
Workplace wellness has been expanded over the past decade to encompass the overall creation of a “culture of health” within the worksite.
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