OSHA releases guidance for protecting manufacturing workers from coronavirus

OSHA recommends maintaining social distancing on the shop floor and training on risk factors and protective behaviors to avoid COVID-19 exposure. It does not require additional personal protective equipment than what workers may already wear. Getty Images

As one might expect, the Washington federal bureaucracy and Congress are consumed with the COVID-19 pandemic, from financial relief for manufacturers and service companies to enforcement alerts dealing with regulatory requirements. In the latter category, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a guide for manufacturers detailing how to protect workers and what needs to be reported on OSHA 300 logs.

OSHA deems the risk of front-line manufacturing workers contracting the coronavirus as being “low exposure.” Based on this classification, the types of administrative controls and safe work practices required to protect facility employees generally will include steps to minimize close contact between employees through social distancing and, where necessary and practical, adjustments to shifts and workdays to minimize the number of employees on the plant floor at any given time. Training on risk factors and protective behaviors to avoid exposure and good hygiene also might be advisable. Except in exceptional circumstances, the OSHA guide does not suggest that additional personal protective equipment (PPE) will be required for workers in low-exposure manufacturing settings.

The OSHA guide recommends that employers develop an infectious disease response plan and implement a process for assessing and implementing these workplace controls, if such a plan is not already in place. Regardless of whether a formal response plan is prepared, companies should document a reasonable assessment and review of their facilities and work tasks to ensure that worker risks are known and understood and that responsible actions are taken to protect at-risk employees. The documentation of these thorough workplace assessments and protective actions also will be valuable in defending against future claims by employees alleging failures to adequately protect those who continue to work during this crisis.

OSHA has also separately clarified that illness from exposure to the coronavirus can be a recordable illness with the same applicable requirements as other workplace injuries if three conditions are met:

1. The case is a confirmed case of COVID-19.
2. The case is work-related.
3. The case involves one or more of the general recording criteria, such as medical treatment beyond first aid and days away from work.

Determining if a COVID-19 case is “work-related” is not going to be an open-and-shut case. OSHA issued guidance on April 10 that “objective evidence” of a COVID-19 case being work-related has to exist. Such evidence could include, for example, a number of cases developing among employees who work closely together without an alternative explanation of how they contracted COVID-19. The evidence also has to be “reasonably available” to the employer. Examples of this include information given to the employer by employees and information related to employees’ health and safety that the employer learns of during the ordinary course of managing the business.

What the OSHA guide does not get into is sanitation of the workplace. This is where the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) comes in. It has a list of disinfectants that ostensibly work against the coronavirus.

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