The Washington Post reported earlier this week the Occupational Safety and Health Administration spent two years drafting a response to a Texas firm that wrote in, asking for government guidance on a plan to allow some of its salesmen to work from home part-time, via computers.
Although OSHA's "advisory letter" to the Texas company was dated Nov. 15, it was posted on the agency's public web site -- officially, to serve as guidance to all other private employers -- and subsequently publicized through the Post and the AP on Tuesday.
What the ruling told employers is that they are responsible to make sure "working conditions" in the home work spaces of employees allowed to work or log in over the Internet from home meet the same "health and safety" standards as the employers' own offices and factories. That includes home workspace lighting, heat, ventilation, fire safety, and even "ergonomic design" of desks and chairs, but doesn't necessarily end there.
No, the "advisory letter" also indicated that if the home workspace is in a basement, for example, the employer is responsible to know whether that basement is reached via some unsafe basement staircase, and thus accrues responsibility to do something about it.
Of course the letter -- from a federal agency which has long agreed with organized labor that "home employment" is a bad thing, supposedly because it evokes memories of 19th century home knitters being assigned "piecework" at slave wages (but actually because folks working at home are harder to track and tax) -- didn't actually (start ital)say(end ital) employers are responsible for performing home inspections. Why, OSHA even went so far as to assure everyone it has no immediate plans for federal agents to tag along on such inspections.
But the agency did advise employers they'd better have "emergency medical plans" on file for those home offices, that they'd better make sure the home workers have adequate first aid kits ... you get the idea.
So did a number of employers around the country, who "immediately put on hold plans to expand telecommuting privileges to employees," the Post reported Thursday.
With some 20 million Americans already telecommuting from home at least part-time -- a largely white-collar phenomenon, and a boon particularly to parents with young children -- the national chorus of outrage was immediate.
After all, once the government requires "home inspections," how long will it be before the appropriate agencies are being regularly informed about bruises on the children or "unsecured" home firearms (Child Welfare), curious mail and home reading materials (ATF and FBI), furs and fancy cars (IRS), Hispanic nannies (INS), or grow lights and other gardening supplies (DEA)?
Both the White House and Labor Secretary Alexis Herman told the Post the immediate strategy after the torrent of outrage broke Tuesday was to attempt to "clarify" the department's position. But "At the end of the day," a White House official told the Post's Frank Swoboda, "they realized there was no clarifying this, so they yanked it."
Yep, Ms. Herman ran up the white flag after only 24 hours. The White House promptly dusted off and exhibited its "surprise and shock." Announcing the letter's withdrawal, Ms. Herman said it had caused "widespread confusion and unintended consequences," even going so far as to claim the letter -- two years in the making -- had never been received by her office for "policy review"!
Despite Ms. Herman's retreat, GOP lawmakers Wednesday indicated they will hold hearings into the letter when Congress returns from winter recess.
Good.
Even in announcing the letter's withdrawal, Ms. Herman was still insisting Wednesday that under the 1971 safety act, employers have always had the responsibility for making sure that "all employees work in safe and healthful conditions" -- a far cry from "Hi, my name is Alexis, and I'm a statist. ..."
"If OSHA and the Department of Labor are actually rescinding their interpretation of health and safety rules for home work sites we are delighted," Pat Cleary of the National Association of Manufacturers felt obliged to observe after Ms. Herman's non-repudiation. "But if they're just 'withdrawing the letter' but sticking to the interpretation, the confusion remains.''
The manufacturers won't be satisfied until the department "clearly states that OSHA's jurisdiction stops at the door of our homes," Mr. Cleary said.
Good, again. And if OSHA won't do that, Congress must do it for them.
"Despite all the talk about the New Democrat 12-Step program to smaller government," the Wall Street Journal editorialized Thursday, "these are the truer instincts now emerging" in the final year of the Clinton commissariat -- "intrude, give orders, force compliance, sue anyone who objects."
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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