OSHA plays the home game

Only days after announcing that companies are responsible for federal
health and safety violations occurring in the home work sites of
America's estimated 19.6 million telecommuters, the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration yesterday nixed the plan, calling instead for
an examination of how workplace standards should be applied in telework
environments.

After rescinding OSHA's "letter of interpretation," which declared
that home work sites fall under current health and safety regulations
holding "an employer ... responsible for ensuring that its employees
have a safe and healthful workplace," Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman
said she was hoping to convene a conference with labor and business
leaders this year to work on crafting governmental policy for
telecommuters.

"The rules of the road are not clear for the 21st century workplace,"
said Herman. Many, however, are worried about how OSHA and the
Department of Labor might map that road.

"Telecommuting provides some people an affordable option that allows
them to work from home," said Naomi Lopez, director of the Center for
Enterprise and Opportunity at the San Francisco-based Pacific
Research Institute. With OSHA's
introduction of additional regulatory burdens, her fear is that it will
cease being affordable, anticipating that any such move to regulate the
home-office space of telecommuters will "increase the cost of doing
business."

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Others, including Gail Martin, executive director of the
International Telework Association, which promotes telecommuting, share
Lopez's concern. Martin fears that OSHA's new interpretation or one
like it would amount to "one more barrier" to telecommuting, saying that
the interpretation would hit small businesses especially hard.

While OSHA's interpretation did not get into specifics, since it is
merely a further application of existing law, it essentially would have
meant that employers would be required to make sure telecommuting
employees have proper lighting, heating, cooling and ventilation, along
with ergonomically correct chairs and computer tables and other
home-office furniture. Additionally, employers would have been required
to provide employees with any training that might be necessary to comply
with OSHA standards. That would include ensuring home work sites have
first-aid kits and emergency medical plans.

Having to direct limited resources towards compliance with these
standards would, said Martin, strip the competitive advantages away from
telecommuting for small companies.

Lopez similarly warns, "Even well intentioned regulations to
'protect' are going to limit economic growth and opportunity for many of
our nation's families -- especially small businesses that are going to
be impacted first by these regulations."

"Small businesses spend disproportionately larger amounts of money to
comply with federal regulations," said Lopez, adding that increasing the
weight of the regulatory burden would lead to "detrimental effects for
economic development," hampering start-up companies and hurting existing
ones. Compliance costs for federal regulations alone currently amount
to $700 billion a year, said Lopez.

The move to regulate telecommuting "is particularly devastating to
women," said Lopez, "that are now deciding, rather than pursue the
corporate boardroom, to work from home."

Some already hold OSHA suspect when it comes to small business. When
asked about the telecommuter advisory, Lewellyn H. Rockwell, president
of the free-market-oriented Ludwig Von Mises Institute said that OSHA, which was first instituted by
President Richard Nixon via executive order, was the "quintessential
Republican regulation agency because it was set up to help big business
at the expense of small business," adding that forming OSHA was "one of
the crimes of Nixon."

Meeting yesterday with a coalition of business groups, one Republican
stood up against the new OSHA interpretation. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va.,
threatened to kill the new interpretation in the legislative process if
the Clinton administration didn't kill it first. Wolf, an ardent
supporter of telecommuting, calls telecommuting "perhaps the most
exciting and significant tool for workers of the 21st century to manage
today's challenges." And Wolf is not alone in his assessment.

The controversy over extending federal regulations into home offices
comes on the heels of a move by a number of states to encourage
telecommuting. Virginia Gov. James Gilmore plans to introduce a
telecommuting tax incentive plan for businesses worth $10 million in the
state's next legislative session, while Maryland already passed similar
legislation last year.

Supporters of telecommuting, including Gilmore and Wolf, cite
improvements in air quality, traffic congestion, family wellness, energy
conservation, and increased flexibility for disabled workers in his
support for telecommuting.

"Unlike building more facilities and roads -- which can take a decade
or a lifetime," said Mid-Atlantic AAA spokesman Lon Anderson, "telework
can give us relief almost immediately," adding that telecommuting "is
one solution that within a year or two could make a dramatic impact on
our area's status as second-worst congestion area in the nation, and
these OSHA (rules) would devastate that possibility."

In a letter to President Clinton dated Jan. 5 Wolf echoed Anderson's
concern, saying that OSHA's advisory "will have a chilling effect on
millions of employees across the nation who now telework and many more
who want to telework." Elsewhere in the same letter Wolf said OSHA's
move represented an "outdated and overly regulated approach to the
realities of the modern-day workplace."

"It seems that with everything we gain, a cure for this or a pill for
that, new problems emerge," said Martin. "It's such a paradigm shift in
the way we manage people," something Lopez says is best done by
contractual arrangements between employee and employer, leaving
government out of the process.

Martin said this is already being taken care of in most well run
companies, with telecommuters adopting formal "memoranda of agreement"
with their bosses regarding the safety of their work environment and how
it should be maintained.

While Lopez and others are pleased the Department of Labor has
withdrawn the new OSHA interpretation pending deeper study of the issue,
she nonetheless cautioned, "Even though the Department of Labor has
decided to step back for now, one should always be cautious when the
government is going to examine anything -- especially when that includes
your home."

Joel Miller is an assistant
managing editor of WorldNetDaily.