The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the federal regulatory body tasked with ensuring that workplaces are safe, and that workers who raise alarm over hazardous workplace conditions are free from retaliation for doing so, issued a ruling earlier this year clarifying who may be granted access to job sites during OSHA inspections. The change, known as the Walkaround Rule, has already had a significant effect throughout many industries on Long Island, and some attorneys say that the consequences of the change may be unfair to employers.
“OSHA has generally allowed representatives of both an employer and an employee to accompany the OSHA Inspector during a physical inspection of an employer’s job site. Importantly, though, the prior version of the Walkaround Rule explicitly limited an ‘employee representative’ to current employees only,” explains Christopher Hampton, a partner at Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone LLP in Mineola. “Under the new rule, an employee now has the right to designate unions, labor activists, attorneys and other third parties as their representative.”
In addition to changing the rule to include third parties, Hampton points out that the language of the rule has also been altered to eliminate examples of individuals who might be deemed “reasonably necessary” to accompany inspections, loosening the requirements on who is allowed to enter job sites during walkarounds.