Safety Tidbit #44 – Personal Protective Equipment Requirements for Temporary Workers

Safety Tidbit #44 – Personal Protective Equipment Requirements for Temporary Workers

Source: OSHA Temporary Worker Initiative Bulletin #2

Similar to Safety Tidbit #10 – Recordkeeping Requirements for Temporary Workers, Temporary workers, are entitled to the same protections under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (the OSH Act) as all other covered workers. When a staffing agency supplies temporary workers to a business, typically, the staffing agency and the staffing agency’s client (also known as the host employer) are joint employers of those workers. Both employers are responsible to some degree for determining the conditions of employment and for complying with the law. In this joint employment structure, questions regarding which employer is responsible for particular safety and health protections are common.

As joint employers of temporary workers, both the host employer and the staffing agency are responsible for ensuring that adequate PPE and associated training is provided. The host employer will usually have the primary responsibility for selecting, providing and ensuring the use of adequate PPE for the process(es) or operation(s) to which workers have been assigned because: 

The host employer is most familiar with the workplace hazards that the temporary workers will encounter.

The host employer generally controls the workplace hazards and the worker’s activities around

, and interaction with, those hazards.

The host employer is usually best situated to perform the hazard assessment required for determining if PPE is necessary and will likely have already done so for its permanent staff.

The staffing agency shares responsibility for its workers’ safety and must take reasonable steps to ensure that the host employer conducts the appropriate hazard assessment and provides adequate PPE. To this end, the staffing agency should become familiar with the hazards at the host employer’s worksite and maintain communication with its workers and the host employer. Such pre-planning and ongoing communication also alerts the staffing agency to persistent or newly-created workplace hazards that may need to be addressed.

The staffing agency and the host employer may agree to have the staffing agency supply some or all of the PPE and provide PPE training as long as the host employer ensures that the PPE is appropriate for the worker’s assigned tasks and that it is provided at no cost to the worker. Such an agreement should be made during the pre-planning meeting(s) and detailed in writing. However, neither employer may escape liability for its ultimate responsibilities under the OSH Act by requiring another party to perform those responsibilities. Both employers may still be liable if adequate PPE and training are ultimately not provided to the workers, regardless of which employer agreed to provide the PPE and training.

In construction, when reading temporary workers above this could be Union Hall workers picked up for a job. Where the Union Hall is the staffing agency and the employer at the job site is the host. Also, I know the practice in construction is to pick up “day laborers.” Although I feel this is a practice that our society needs to abandon, there is no staffing agency, and therefore, the entire burden falls on the host employer to provide all PPE and training.  We need to be vigilant when on sites to inquire if there are temporary workers and inquire about their training and evaluate their PPE usage.

As an Industrial Hygienist, my curiosity lies with the temporary or union hall worker that must wear a respirator. Who is responsible for their medical surveillance to evaluate the effects of the airborne hazard?  Medical qualification and fit-testing can be taken care of by the contract between the host and staffing agency. I haven’t seen anything about evaluating the worker to ensure they have not, in fact, been exposed. Whether that is because of inadequate, inappropriate or misused PPE. Until we address all of the aspects of PPE usage, the worker is only partially protected.

Hope this was informative and thanks for reading.  ~Bryan