You are all no doubt aware that OSHA does not yet have a specific standard addressing viral pandemics. Rather, the General Duty Clause will be applied to this situation.  The GDC requires that “Each employer shall furnish each of [its] employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to its employees.”

Despite the wording of the GDC, it does not make employers absolute guarantors that their employees will not be injured or exposed to hazards on the job. Rather, OSHA must prove four elements in order to establish a violation of the GDC. One of those elements is that the employer failed to implement feasible and useful methods to correct the hazard.

OSHA recently issued “Ten Steps All Workplaces Can Take to Reduce Risk of Exposure to Coronavirus.” You can find it here: https://www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA3994.pdf . Most of these are common-sense steps that we are familiar with. OSHA may construe a failure to follow these ten steps as a failure to implement “feasible and useful methods to correct the hazard” should an employee contract the virus in your workplace.

If you are not already doing so, I would suggest that you strongly consider implementing as many of the ten steps recommended by OSHA as possible, and that you maintain records showing that you were aware of OSHA’s recommendations and followed them. Complying with the recommendations is not enough; you must be able to prove that you did so.

As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions.

Stay safe.

THIS IS IMPORTANT! If you want to take advantage of the tax credit available for paid leave provided to your employees under the EPSLA and EFMLA of the FFCRA, you need to read this. The IRS has given us an outline of what some of the FFRCA-related forms should look like.

This outline is contained in the IRS’s new list of Frequently Asked Questions related to the documentation requirements of the tax credit provisions of the FFCRA. For those of you who want to wade through the original document, you can find it here https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/covid-19-related-tax-credits-for-required-paid-leave-provided-by-small-and-midsize-businesses-faqs Continue reading “The IRS Tells Us What Information We Must Obtain From Employees On FFRCA Leave In Order To Qualify For The Tax Credit AKA: This Is What Your Forms Should Look Like” →