Multi-employer worksites are encountered on a regular basis in the construction and manufacturing industries. You’ll find an abundance of reading materials and definitions on this topic, so this blog is to help simplify the standard to a more understandable discussion. We’ll focus on construction jobsites – although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Multi-Employer Policy applies to all workplaces where multiple employers are working at one location.
Many have requested an absolute definition of a multi-employer worksite. OSHA defines the question this way:
“Under the Multi-Employer Citation Policy, any employer that exposes one of its employees to the hazard created by an unsafe condition may be subject to an OSHA citation. In situations where an employer’s own employees are not exposed to a hazard, that employer may still be subject to OSHA citations if the employer qualifies as a “creating, “correcting” or “controlling” employer.”
OSHA employs a two-step process to determine whether more than one employer may be cited for a hazardous condition:
- If the employer is a creating, exposing, correcting or controlling employer (defined below). Once they determine the role of the employer, step two is used to determine whether a citation is appropriate.
- If the employer falls into one of the four categories (creating, exposing, correcting or controlling), they have obligations with respect to OSHA requirements. OSHA then determines if the employer's actions were sufficient to meet their obligations.
By applying this two-step process, you can determine the role for enforcement purposes of a given employer. Levels of responsibilities and citations vary based on their role as:
- Creating Employer – An employer that caused the hazardous condition(s).
- It’s their obligation to not create a hazard, so they can be cited for any exposed individual.
- Exposing Employer – An employer whose own employees are exposed to the hazard.
- They can be cited as the exposing and/or creating employer if they created the hazard.
- Correcting Employer – An employer who is engaged in a common undertaking on the same worksite as the exposing employer, and is responsible for correcting the hazard.
- They can be cited as a correcting employer if they did not exercise reasonable care in preventing and discovering violations and meeting their obligations of correcting the hazard.
- Controlling Employer – An employer who has general supervisory authority over the worksite, including the power to correct the safety and health violations itself, or require others to correct them. Control can be established by contract, or in the absence of explicit contractual provisions.
- A controlling employer must exercise reasonable care to prevent and detect violations on the site. The extent of the measures that a controlling employer must implement to satisfy this duty of reasonable care is less than what is required of an employer with respect to protecting its own employees. This means the controlling employer is not normally required to inspect for hazards as frequently, or to have the same level of knowledge of the applicable standards or of trade expertise as the employer it has hired.
Keep in mind, many situations exist where employers are multiple types of employer based on the above definitions.
While this is a simplified version of the overall standard, letters of interpretation and directives, it clearly identifies that virtually every contractor on a jobsite can be interpreted as having safety responsibilities and held accountable by OSHA.
There are many factors that impact the potential for an OSHA citation. The best practice for policyholders, whether they are the creating, exposing, correcting or controlling employer, is to ensure the hazard is eliminated.
