OSHA Forms Alliance with American Staffing Association to Protect Temps
The workplace safety agency is continuing to build on the initiative it launched in April 2013.
OSHA has signed an alliance with the American Staffing Association that aims to further protect temporary workers from workplace health and safety hazards. OSHA reported that both parties will conduct outreach with workers about their rights, educate staffing firms and their clients on their responsibility to protect workers under the OSH Act, distribute OSHA guidance and information on recognition and prevention of workplace hazards, and further develop ways of communicating that information to staffing firms, host employers, and temporary workers. The alliance aims to educate the temp worker community through print and electronic media, electronic assistance tools, and the OSHA and ASA websites.
This action continues to advance the initiative OSHA launched in April 2013 about temporary workers. OSHA sent a memorandum to the agency's regional administrators directing field inspectors to assess whether employers who use temps are complying with their responsibilities under the law, as well as whether temporary workers have received required training in a language and vocabulary they could understand.
"We want to make sure that at the end of every work shift, all temporary workers in the United States are able to go home safely to their families," Dr. David Michaels, assistant secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, said as the ASA alliance was announced. "Through this alliance with the ASA, we will increase outreach to staffing agencies and host employers and provide information and education that is vital to protecting temporary workers."