While OSHA is promulgating a standard primarily to protect healthcare workers from patient violence, a domestic violence expert reminds the agency that many attacks against women from husbands or boyfriends occur at the workplace.
“Homicide is the No. 1 cause of death for women in the workplace,” Pam Paziotopoulos, executive director of the Center for Domestic Violence Policy, said in comments submitted to the OSHA docket. “The U.S. Department of Justice has determined approximately 13,000 acts of violence are committed at the workplace each year by husbands and boyfriends. In nearly two-thirds of workplace assaults, women were the victims.”
OSHA announced on Jan. 10, 2017, that it will promulgate a federal regulation to protect healthcare workers from violence. That action followed an OSHA Dec. 7, 2016, request for information,1 and the docket is open for comments through April 6, 2017.
“I understand that domestic or intimate partner workplace violence falls under the Type IV category of relationships between the victim and perpetrator … and that the Request for Information generally intends to focus on Type II relationships between the worker and the client or patient,” Paziotopoulos states. “However, I disagree with [OSHA’s] characterization that violence stemming from Type IV relationships ‘are not the typical foreseeable workplace violence incidents that are associated with predictable risk factors in the workplace that employers can reduce or eliminate.’”
Employers can reduce or eliminate the risk of workplace violence stemming from Type IV relationships, she argues, noting that “many forward-thinking employers already have rigorous policies in place to do so. These policies can save lives, particularly workers who have no relationship with the perpetrator but happen to be near the intended victim when the perpetrator arrives at the workplace with an intention to cause harm.”
To prevent this type of violence, the employer must be informed of the potential threat by the employee. The employer then must make reasonable accommodations to the employee to minimize the opportunity for contact between the perpetrator and the intended victim-employee, Paziotopoulos said in the comments.
“Without prevention policies in place, workers suffer,” she says. “For example, 74% percent of female victims of domestic violence are harassed by their abusers on the job, 56% are late for work on several occasions per month, 28% leave work early at least five times per month, 54% miss a minimum of three days per month, and 75% use company time to handle domestic violence-related matters.”
If employers do not include intimate partner violence in their policies, then OSHA should impose a “substantial fine” to the workplace, she concludes.
“The primary concern should be on generating awareness of how intimate partner violence infiltrates the workplace and the realistic potential harm it can cause to the abused employee and fellow co-workers,” she notes.
REFERENCE
- OSHA. Prevention of Workplace Violence in Healthcare and Social Assistance. Fed Reg. 2016-29197. Dec. 7, 2016: http://bit.ly/2hB5gL5.
