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December 2005 — Vol. 83, No. 10
SMALL BUSINESS
Who’s responsible for safety
when a worker works from home?
Is an employer responsible for providing a safe workplace regardless
of where the employee works?
It depends. OSHA considered a regulation that would have required the
employer to assure safe conditions for people working at home, but that
regulation was never implemented. Still, employers need to be concerned
about this issue.
“This is a Pandora’s Box,” says attorney John Letizia,
of Letizia, Ambrose & Falls in New Haven.
Today, an employee can be working for an employer at home or virtually
anywhere. “If the employer knows the worker is working on a laptop
at the local coffee shop, then the coffee shop is the office, and the
employer is liable for workers’ compensation injuries that occur
at that facility.”
Letizia advises that employers with home-based workers using computers
should create written job descriptions covering the employees’ home-based
duties and require the employees to clock in on the computer.
If the work-at-home situation is only to benefit the employee, it is
less likely that the employer will be liable in the event of an injury.
Should a disputed workers’ comp claim wind up in court, Letizia
says courts will look at the totality of the home workplace arrangement,
including the hours, the interruptions, the duties and more, to determine
if the injury is compensable under workers’ compensation.
Regardless of physical location, a worker’s compensation injury
means the employer’s insurance could have to pay all related medical
bills, a weekly workers’ compensation indemnity or disability benefit,
and perhaps a permanency award for any loss of bodily function.
CBIA members with questions about workers’ comp can call our employment
experts at 860-244-1900.
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