The Rights and Protection of OSHA Workers
This course will include a written individual project of at least 10 pages (not counting the cover, table of contents and bibliography) in length utilizing a minimum 4 sources. Please utilize APA style. Please use a minimum of four (4) sources in your research.
TOPIC:
on any legal topic impacting the safety and health profession. OSHA
Healthcare workers could be described as the most important consideration in any occupational safety and health hazard training program. This is because their work predisposes them to various physical and chemical hazards that are likely to cause greater harm to them and the people around them. Legal responsibilities compel an employer to abide by the law and, as such, honor all its contractual obligations and work to fulfill its mandate and objective within the law. This essay looks at the various health and safety hazards many healthcare professionals are subjected to daily. An employer should feel responsible for acting right and providing adequate support to their employees in the healthcare profession by offering adequate training, and an inclusive work atmosphere for all potential threats to the worker to be dealt with. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA), is a tool implemented to protect workers (especially in the healthcare profession) by their employers. It adequately works to propagate C.S.R. within the business and hold employers and their organizations legally accountable for their worker’s safety. In most cases, OSHA rights work to provide a safe and healthy working environment for all its employees as it sets standards and defines worker and organizational needs and objectives in the standard workplace. This essay will focus on rights and protect the healthcare practitioners’ health and safety as provided under OSHA. It covers employee attitude, injuries in the workplace, fire and safety, physical and hazardous chemicals.
OSHA provides recourse for healthcare practitioners injured during work. Miller (2018) identifies that it is a statute under Employment Law, a form of common law, that governs employer-employment relations within the workplace. Ideally, OSHA’s mission is to enforce standards that ensure safety and a healthy environment for the employees by giving out proper training, education, outreach, and Helpance where needed in the workplace (Babcock L.L.C., 2020). This regulates employment while also working to ensure the company does not lose a lot of money in civil litigation and compensatory damages to the workers. It creates an avenue for the growth of workers’ rights and protection under the law by regulating and setting industry standards. The OSHA rules are especially enforced within the private sector. The responsibility for regulating and implementing OSHA policies falls under the U.S. Department of Labor. OSHA pertains an employer’s treatment of his workers within the workplace during employment and only in the context of their employment. OSHA actively protect the employees and their families against any form of loss related to their employment.
How Do Employers Achieve Violation of Workers Rights?
The healthcare profession offers a very dynamic workplace for the average practitioner. It is constantly changing mandates by a wide range of arbitrary values. A wide range of patients needs to increase regulation on privacy and conduct to the constant need for training. These are all aimed at ensuring the best practice is available when the citation arises. Nonetheless, practitioner’s rights as workers varies to a variety of external elements that often compromise them. This works to affect how they conduct their duty and always limits the ability of a health worker to complete their task and come out safely and healthy on the other side. With the outbreak pandemic, worker’s habilitation of healthcare workers’ rights has been on the increase across the country. This has been directly attributed in most parts to whistleblowers, who faced retaliatory charges such as was the case in Lauri Mazurkiewicz v. Northwestern Memorial Hospital et al., case number 2020-L-003511, in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois. Here a health practitioner faced retaliatory acts by the hospital after they blew the whistle on lack of adequate protective equipment.
The provision of safety equipment for all health workers is a right to them and a requirement under the law. In Huntington Memorial Hospital, Petitioner, v. The Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Respondent; Irene Mutuc et al., Real Parties in Interest hospitals violated overtime pay for employees. This limited them from access to compensation. In Huntington Hospital v. Huntington Hospital Nurses Association, the employer was cited for having racially discriminated Latina nurses and was liable for creating an unconducive environment for the workers. In another case, Kaci Hickox v. The State of Maine, the plaintiff, took the state of Maine to court for limiting her freedom of movement and access to family, after she had returned from a mission in Ebola-stricken West Africa. The State of Maine arrived at a settlement with Hickox after it was deemed to have possibly limited her rights. Medical practitioners have been limited from expressing criticism and exposing employer’s negligence in most cases. In 2020, particularly, lack provision of proper protective equipment increased practitioners’ exposure to violent patients and intentional censure in cases where patients were exposed to chemical, biohazard, and physical harm have played an important role in the violation of practitioner’s rights.
Other fundamental regions where the hospitals failed to ensure adequate provisions were in providing adequate training for employees. In the case of physician negligence, hospitals can be sued based because they failed to provide adequate training for their practitioner. McKay (2018) identifies in the respirator fit test method; hospitals failed to comply with regulatory standards due to limited resources. This opens grounds for the suit as it propagates non-conventional, hospital-specific solutions contrary to the required procedure. McKay (2018) states that it risked the practitioner’s overall health and safety. Additionally, Thompson (2016) identifies that in some limited cases where a drug’s hazardous impacts are long term and not easily detected, more and more hospital staff risk being exposed to it, this was specially recorded in new drugs such as Dronabinol, Lifitegrast, and Tetracaine hydrochloride and oxymetazoline hydrochloride.
Employee Rights and Protection
Under federal law, an employee has the right to be trained in a language they understand. This is one of the most fundamental rights offered under the OSHA 2007. The OSHA standards require that all employees be given the training to ensure they perform adequately within their stated field. The U.S. Department of Labor (2020) specifies that the instructional and training techniques should adequately understand the work requirements. Failure to provide employees adequate and effective understanding will see the employer be liable before the law. In the case that the employee is faced with an injury while in the course of their work. This implies that all information fed to the employees should be given in a manner that they can understand. Some of the potential physical hazards identified to pose a threat to medical practitioners include lift accidents, slips, trips, falls, needlesticks accidents, fire safety, electrical safety, and medical waste handling.
Employers are required to provide conducive conditions for the training of healthcare. Safety attitudes generally imply the context and climate in which most employees are trained. Good attitudes create understanding and motivate training. The U.S. Department of Labor (2020) specifies that all employees need to be trained in a manner and language that they understand. If an employee receives information in a language other than the English language, they will be required to offer further Helpance in hazard communication in the same language that the training was offered. The information given must be tailored to employee language and education levels. The standard policy statement from the U.S. Department of Labor (2020) identifies that an employer will be required to give the training in the language that the employee understands. Even when the vocabulary is limited, the level of training offered must compensate for all the vocabulary limitations recorded.
It is the employee’s right to work with machines that are safeguarded. The major assumption regarding this clause is that any open region of the machine that is likely to result in employee injury must be safeguarded. This is specially provided during the operation of the machine. It guards the employee, especially during mechanical motion and action. U.S. Department of Labor (2020) identifies in effect to movement, all mechanical elements that operate in a rotating, cutting, punching, transversing, shearing, bending, and reciprocating motion. These are potential actions and motions that could bring harm to the employee and result in their deaths within the workplace. The employer needs to safeguard employees by preventing contact, especially with hands, arms, and other parts of their body. In the hospital setting, nurses, doctors, physicians to the support staff should be provided with training on how to clean the machines, operate them, and maintain them to ensure limited injuries as a direct result of lifting or working with the machines.
Additionally, the employer must protect them from falling objects, secure all the mechanical parts in their place, and play no part in ensuring introducing new hazards in the workplace. Hospital workplace one of the highest number of movable objects to tailor them to specified needs and wants. Creating a safety framework that guides their use and positioning will work greatly to protect all stakeholders. U.S. Department of Labor (2020) also denies the employer from being party to, or actively working to promote worker interference when practitioners work with the machines. The employer is required to provide and allow for safe maintenance of all machinery.
OSHA additionally recognizes non-mechanical hazards, such as the wiring problems that may be present within the workplace. These are defined as physical hazards. As a health hazard, they may bring forth flammability, corrosion, and explosibility (U.S. Department of Labor, 2020). Employers must safeguard all connections from exposure to the employee and provide an adequate working environment free from interfering with an employee’s core duty. In line with offering safety training, the employee must offer protective clothing, and Personal Protective Equipment, ensure good lighting, and always keep proper maintenance (U.S. Department of Labor, 2020). This will ensure that the employee is properly catered for against mechanical, chemical, and non-mechanical, but physically obstructive elements that might harm them.
Employees have the right to access safety gear that includes gloves and a harness to prevent fatal falls. The fall prevention student workbook by OSHA advises that all employers should hire qualified and adequately trained personnel to work on jobs that are deemed to be high risk (Latino Workers Resource Center, 2015). Fall in the complex project is a common occurrence, but potentially harmful. In this regard, the OSHA of 1970 identifies that it is the employer’s sole responsibility to ensure that before workers go into these facilities, they should be accorded enough protection to cushion them from hazardous fall that might result in their deaths and lawsuit to the organization. The harnesses should be up to standard, and the employees need to be taught how to put them to use adequately.
In some organizations, toxic chemicals and work affect the average worker. This may not be immediate in most cases, but a long-term implication of working in such facilities for an extended period. Most organizations are advised to provide adequate P.P.E.s to protect their employers from exposure to such toxic chemicals and biohazards. 2020 has specifically, proved to be a tough year regarding protection against the chemical hazards due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic worldwide. U.S. Department of Labor, Covid-19 (2020) standard practice for the year 2020 has been dictated majorly by the unique provision that was provided under the law to dictate social distancing measures.
Employees have the right to medical records privacy. Employers are also required to give their employees adequate information on the disease. Employees have a right to know about their medical conditions earned at work and given information on its spread, offer protective and sanitizing equipment for their employees, and provide hazard recognition techniques after every regular period (U.S. Department of Labor, Covid-19, 2020). Employers need to contextualize conditions that define toxic exposure to their employees. U.S. Department of Labor (2020) identifies that toxic chemicals cause irritation, sensitization, and carcinogenicity. In this regard, employers who work with chemical hazards must label them and define their functional quantities. U.S. Department of Labor (2020) requires that employers train their workers to safely handle them and provide them with a safety checklist that examines and supervises how they handle the chemicals. Finally, employees should be communicated to the actionable level and the procedures for hazard recognition. This prevents them from experiencing much more loss of chemicals, and other hazardous materials are failed to be controlled.
In the event of an injury, the worker will have the right to receive copies of medical records that were attained in their work. Employers are required to provide the worker with this document to maintain transparency. Medical bills in the hospital for injuries attained at work due to work accidents are directly liable to the employer. Clarkson, Miller, and Cross (2018) identify that compensation for time lost at work and damages or costs to treatment and emotional distress under general damages are considered when making a case against negligence. If the hospital fails to adequately prove that it played a significant role in making the work environment better, more than ever, they will be held liable for any damages incurred.
The quality and accuracy of the information provided will be critical in shaping a case for the employees before the law courts. The Department of Labor (2020) identifies that this applies to the former employees of an organization, their legal representatives, or family members who might have been exposed to the agent and, as such, been compromised. For example, if the employee fails to provide P.P.E.s for its staff who are treating coronavirus patients, it will be liable if their staff contracts the disease. This will be more pronounced if there are enough resources allocated for this provision, but the hospital fails to provide them. This is a form of assurance and right for all employees before the law. According to regulators, employers are also required to give employees material information pertinent to the standard needs and record treatment on time to create a sense of awareness required to maintain its use (U.S. Department of Labor, 2020). Employers must maintain up-to-date customer records, inform workers of such a document, and always make them available to the employee.
Employers are needed to be accountable to their employees and their representatives by provisioning access to medical records when needed. This is a form of compliance that is regulated by the U.S. DoL. Employee medical data in all other regards are usually entitled to them and are regarded as private information. Employers are not under any circumstances required to expose them to third parties who bear no authorization (Clarkson, Miller Cross, 2018). The U.S. Department of Labor identifies that storing the information and disseminating them to an employee’s legal representatives is to ensure that an employee plays a meaningful role in their health management.
Tort laws within the United States act as remedies for breaching the numerous protected private and public interest. Clarkson Miller and Cross (2018) define whistleblowing as informing the authorities or upper management that the employer or superiors are involved in an unlawful act. OSHA protects an individual or group whistleblowers from retaliation by the employer. The act of whistleblowing here covers the exposure of the employer, employers, employee, and employees from unlawful acts that may work to endanger the worker within the organization. Ideally, the employee who is tipping the authorities to the illegal activity may lose their jobs, benefits, physical harm, or other elements. Busse (2018) identifies that the OSHA comes within the federal statutes outside the discrimination. Context to protect the employee. Some of the more important laws that protect the average whistleblower include the federal Whistleblower Protection Act (5 U.S.C. Sec. 1212), which adequately bars any retaliatory measures have released compromising documents that outline major breach. In the private sector, laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) act of 2002 works to protect employees.
Employers are required to provide adequate protection for their employees under the law. Employers are better placed to help their employees access their rights and are accountable before the law. OSHA provides employees more ground for justified treatment and recognition to promote a better working environment in cases where the employers are driven by profit that they may look over the working condition to achieve this. The Department of Labor critically works with state and federal institutions, to provide adequate protection for all employees before the law. It works mostly with employees within the private sector. Additionally, OSHA workers have been identified to play a significant role in mitigating runaway corruption within most institutions.
Conclusion
In the pursuit of profits, many businesses may consider looking over some laws and ethical responsibilities to ensure they achieve more profits. In most cases, this may result in greater repercussions for the business and its employees. If the employees are unaware of these consequences, they are placed in a very precarious position, facing immense losses. In most grave scenarios, they might acquire injuries, lose part of their bodies, and incur many costs in medical treatment and loss of work. This might lead to emotional distress and even death (if they did not die immediately after their accident). Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, provides recourse for the employees, their dependent at home, and their representatives in case of negligence by their employer. It compels the employer to train the employee on all matters about their job. This is their legal right. They also have the right to be provided all the necessary protective gear and a right to be given an avenue to report their employers if they do not provide all these aspects. They are supposed to be trained in a language that they understand better.
References
Busse, R. (2018). Employees’ rights. Naperville, Ill.: Sphinx Pub.
Clarkson, K., Miller, R., and Cross, 2018. Business Law Texts And Cases. 14th ed. Boston: Cengage Learning.
Latino Workers Resource Center. (2015). Managing Fall Protection Hazards Workbook. Retrieved August 3, 2020, from https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/2018-12/fy15_sh-27683-sh5_Fall_Prevention_Student_Workbook_English.pdf
McKay, R. T. (2018). Respirator fit test methods — Are faster protocols equivalent to OSHA? Journal of Occupational & Environmental Hygiene, 15(7), D53–D57. https://doi-org.sbcc.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/15459624.2018.1463098
Ricker, D. (2020). As exposed health care workers seek legal remedies, who’s liable for lack of personal protective equipment?. Retrieved August 3, 2020, from https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/as-exposed-health-care-workers-seek-legal-remedies-whos-liable-for-lack-of-personal-protective-equipment
Thompson, C. A. (2016). New OSHA document reviews hazardous-drug safety for employees. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 73(16), 1204–1205. https://doi-org.sbcc.idm.oclc.org/10.2146/news160050
U.S. S.E.C. (2002) “Waste Management Founder, Five Other Former Top Officers Sued for Massive Fraud.” Available at: https://www.sec.gov/news/headlines/wastemgmt6.htm (Accessed 2020)
U.S. Department of Labor. (2020). Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Retrieved August 3, 2020, from https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/oshact/completeoshact
