"Permitting employees access to guns on business premises
is a recognizable hazard that can spark workplace violence,
a fact recognized by OSHA.50 Moreover, companies
can “feasibly prevent” this hazard by adopting a gun-free
policy. Accordingly, it is likely a breach of OSHA’s general
duty clause if a company does not ban guns from its
premises, including its parking areas, because guns can be
easily retrieved from such areas by disgruntled employees.
This federal standard of duty applies to all private employers
in America."

Never heard of that before.

Although OSHA says a lot of dumb things

Putting toilet paper in the holder the wrong way violates OSHA. So this doesn't surprise me.

Kentucky has a law prohibiting any place of business from prohibiting employees from carrying firearms in their vehicle.

Suck on that OSHA
One of the (few)reasons I regret moving away from Ky

Quoted: "Permitting employees access to guns on business premises is a recognizable hazard that can spark workplace violence, a fact recognized by OSHA.50 Moreover, companies can “feasibly prevent” this hazard by adopting a gun-free policy. Accordingly, it is likely a breach of OSHA’s general duty clause if a company does not ban guns from its premises, including its parking areas, because guns can be easily retrieved from such areas by disgruntled employees. This federal standard of duty applies to all private employers in America."

How about you posting where you got that from.  It looks like an opinon from an anti-gun or at least over cautious company loss prevention lawyer.

Quoted: Says who?

I'll give you three guesses.

Hint: It's name is a 3 letter acronym that starts with a V, ends with C and has a P in the middle.

We are going to need to ban hammers from framers, chainsaws from loggers, and skil saws from carpenters using that logic.

Freakin dumbasses.

The Genral Duty Clause is so vague that OSHA can use to to site an employer for just about anything. They use it all the time to inforce things that they do not have specific regs on. I think I read some where it is actually the most violated reg.

A. Each Employer:    * shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees;    * shall comply with occupational safety and health standards promulgated under this Act.

I don't see how a firearm could be considered a recognized hazard though.

Bradycampaign

They have something about this on their website

Newracer sums up their argument- allowing guns violates the general duty clause of OSHA

ive got a copy of the the 2005 osha regs its about the size of two phone books. ill have to take a peek at that.

Quoted: ive got a copy of the the 2005 osha regs its about the size of two phone books. ill have to take a peek at that.

Please do since you have the regs.

hmm gave it a quick look i couldnt find anything regarding  the general duty clause.  But then again it is organized in a really weird way and might be under cantileiver gantry cranes  as far as i can tell
My copy is about standards for general industry (29 CFR Part 1910).  

but i did a quick search and discovered this......


The Clause
In order to include the consideration of ergonomic hazards in normal work place inspections without the use of specific standards, OSHA has turned to the provisions of Section 5 of the OSH Act or the "General Duty Clause" which states:

Section 5:

A. Each Employer:

shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees;
shall comply with occupational safety and health standards promulgated under this Act.
B. Each employee shall comply with occupational safety and health standards and all rules, regulations and orders issued pursuant to this Act which are applicable to his own actions and conduct.

Discussion
It is under the provisions of paragraph 5A(1) that OSHA cites for ergonomic disorders. The language in paragraph 5B gives the impression that the employee holds significant responsibility for complying to health and safety standards. Although it appears that the employee could be fined by OSHA for not complying to health and safety standards, the employer bares most of the responsibility for compliance in the eyes of OSHA.

If an ergonomic hazard (or other hazard) exists, OSHA inspectors may issue a citation under the General Duty Clause when the following criteria are met:

There is not an applicable OSHA standard.
The employer failed to keep the work place free of a hazard to which employees of that employer were exposed.
The hazard is (or should have been) recognized by the employer.
The hazard is causing or was likely to cause death or other serious physical harm.
There is a feasible and useful method to correct the hazard.
The absence of specific ergonomic standards requires interpretations when using the general duty clause.

Would the hazard cause serious physical harm?

Is the hazard recognized?

Do feasible abatement methods exist?

So OSHA could come out and demand guns be banned?

Quoted: "Permitting employees access to guns on business premises is a recognizable hazard that can spark workplace violence, a fact recognized by OSHA.50 Moreover, companies can “feasibly prevent” this hazard by adopting a gun-free policy. Accordingly, it is likely a breach of OSHA’s general duty clause if a company does not ban guns from its premises, including its parking areas, because guns can be easily retrieved from such areas by disgruntled employees. This federal standard of duty applies to all private employers in America."

Yeah and the same with knives, clubs, tire-irons, baseball bats, glass bottles, rocks, motor vehicles, poisons, steel-toe boots, fists... etc.

If anything, any company that DISARMS an employee (especially women) who would then be "easily" assaulted, raped and murdered by a "disgruntled employee" should be held fully liable for creating a "dangerous workplace environment" whereby employees are unable to defend themselves and are entirely and intentionally reliant on the COMPANY for protection against ANY attack or injury from "disgruntled employees".

Quoted: So OSHA could come out and demand guns be banned?

I dont see how. They cant really BAN anything. They dont really work that way.  

if your in violation of some rule all they really do is fine your ass  over and over. If the problem still isnt corrected they will shut a facility down permanently or until the problem is fixed.


however i could see them regulating them in an employment setting. But not outside of that.

Quoted: Quoted: So OSHA could come out and demand guns be banned? I dont see how. They cant really BAN anything. They dont really work that way.   if your in violation of some rule all they really do is fine your ass  over and over. If the problem still isnt corrected they will shut a facility down permanently or until the problem is fixed. however i could see them regulating them in an employment setting. But not outside of that.

Start small and then take it to the judge. Lawsuit file on just these REGs.

www.csgv.org/news/headlines/nytimes_conoco.cfm

The New York Times
NRA Fights Energy Giant Over Stance on a Lawsuit
By Ralph Blumenthal
8/03/05

The National Rifle Association and ConocoPhillips, one of the nation's largest energy companies, headed toward a showdown over gun control on private property on Tuesday, with the rifle association vowing to put up hundreds of billboards casting the oil giant as an enemy of gun owners.

''We didn't seek this fight, and we're not running away from it if it means taking on one of the largest corporations in the world,'' Wayne LaPierre, the rifle association's executive vice president, said in a phone interview from Washington after returning from Oklahoma, where he had announced the boycott on Monday night.

The association is focusing its wrath on ConocoPhillips because the company joined a federal lawsuit to block an Oklahoma law that allows employees to keep guns in cars parked in company lots. The law was enacted after 12 workers were fired from a Weyerhaeuser paper mill in southeast Oklahoma in 2002.

ConocoPhillips -- the largest company based in Houston and the largest oil refiner in the country, with assets of $97 billion -- did not respond in detail. A spokesman, Jeffrey Callender, said the company had been ''in touch with the N.R.A. throughout the process'' and ''at this point was continuing to maintain its stance.''

ConocoPhillips also issued a short statement saying that it supported the Second Amendment and the right of law-abiding citizens to own guns.

''Our primary concern is the safety of all our employees,'' the company said, adding, ''We are simply trying to provide a safe and secure working environment for our employees by keeping guns out of our facilities, including our company parking lots.''

The Williams Companies, another major energy company, and Halliburton have also joined the lawsuit, but ConocoPhillips was selected because of its size, Mr. LaPierre said.

Whirlpool had originally brought the lawsuit, but a spokesman, Stephen Duthie, said it dropped out after assurances from the state attorney general that the law would not affect the company's authority to keep guns off its property; Mr. Duthie said the rifle association had not influenced that decision.

Halliburton, the energy services giant whose subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root employed six of the fired workers, said Tuesday that it continued to side with ConocoPhillips against the Oklahoma law.

''It is our view that firearms should not be permitted on premises where Halliburton conducts business and that the law should not require the company to allow them,'' said a spokeswoman, Cathy Mann.

Another company, the Nordam Group, a maker of aircraft components, also has submitted briefs in support of the lawsuit. The chief executive, Ken Lackey, called guns on a work site ''improper and dangerous'' and said that as a former N.R.A. member he was unconcerned about pressure from the organization.

The companies involved in the lawsuit say that with about 17 killings a week in American workplaces, it was sound policy and within their rights as property owners to ban weapons from their parking lots.

Mr. LaPierre said that ''nobody is proposing you be allowed to walk into a nuclear plant with a gun,'' but that workers had a constitutional right to keep legal weapons secured in their cars when they went to work.

The rifle association, which says 90 million Americans own guns, is asking its 4 million members and others not to patronize Conoco or Phillips 66 gas stations.

Just last month, it canceled plans to hold its 2007 national convention in Columbus, Ohio, after that city enacted a ban on assault weapons.

The dispute in Oklahoma stems from a crackdown at Weyerhaeuser against employee drug abuse. A company spokesman, Bruce Amundson, said trained dogs sniffing in the parking lot of the paper mill in Valliant found a dozen cars with rifles, shotguns, handguns and some automatic weapons, violations of a new policy banning weapons in cars. The gun owners, including contract workers for Kellogg Brown & Root, were fired.

Some sued in federal court, claiming in part that the gun policy had not been spelled out. They lost but are appealing to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

In response to the firings, Oklahoma lawmakers passed a bill that would bar property owners from restricting those without felony records from keeping firearms in a locked vehicle. But that measure, to take effect in November, has now been blocked by the companies' lawsuit.

The reality is it is not common sense to carry a firearm with you while on the job site. There are enough other hazards to watch out for. If you work or have worked in construction, you know what I am talking about.

Quoted: The reality is it is not common sense to carry a firearm with you while on the job site. There are enough other hazards to watch out for. If you work or have worked in construction, you know what I am talking about.

Grow up.

Quoted: Quoted: The reality is it is not common sense to carry a firearm with you while on the job site. There are enough other hazards to watch out for. If you work or have worked in construction, you know what I am talking about. Grow up.

Do you work in construction?

OSHA cannot "ban" anything.  The general duty clause is there as a "catch all phrase" basically to back up OSHA if they don't have a rule addressing an issue yet there is a hazard present at a workplace.

A quick scan and search of OSHA's site leads me to believe that the quoted quote in the first post is definetely not from federal OSHA.  I searched for several words including gun, firearms, and a mixture of gun terms only to find one thing.  OSHA has nothing to do with guns unless its an air gun like a nailer, powder actuated tool, or safety in the workplace that makes guns like at Colt, Bushmaster, or any othe gun maker.  

However if you go here you will see that the Brady Bunch has a document which talks of how "The NRA is forcing guns into the workplace."

I am currently researching their footnotes to see if they hold water.

I am the Director of EH&S for a construction company and have never come across such a stance from federal or several state OSHAs.  

As tripledouble mentioned there are enough hazards on most construction sites but I also include most of our employees.  Ever fire someone who was drunk, on drugs, etc?  Do you think the police are going to come and "protect me" when I do the firing?  They will only come after the bastard has assaulted me or another worker and then who knows what else.  Thta is why I almost always carry a firearm on the jobsite even if the client strictly forbids it.  

Even my policy says "thou shalt leave your gun in your car in the parking lot..." but what good is that going to do me or anyone else who may need a firearm because some junkie decided to come back for his layoff check and didn't like his foreman?

Quoted: The reality is it is not common sense to carry a firearm with you while on the job site. There are enough other hazards to watch out for. If you work or have worked in construction, you know what I am talking about.

Sure. Like loaders, backhoes, forklifts, cement trucks, rebar in footers, drunk framers, speed freak roofers, belligerent carpenters and drywall guys.....

Yup, can't see any reason to have a means of protecting myself in an evironment full of potentialy hostile strangers (not everyone is on your crew) with easy access to 2x4's, picks, roofing hammers, drywall knives, front end loaders, pieces of rebar etc.....


Not all construction guys are bad. But some are Grade A, 12 cylinder nutjobs with 12lb sledge hammers...

I worked for a heavy construction company that worked on paper mills and steel mills. So you have these general laborers, carpenters, crane operators, millwrights, pipe fitters, and pipe welders who are sometimes dangerous and short tempered and have one less marble of a full set. Well, crane operators were least busy and best paid so they were the least short-tempered. It's those dangerous people who you don't want carrying a gun, because then everyone will want to carry a gun and it would become this Fallujah of a job site.

Quoted: The reality is it is not common sense to carry a firearm with you while on the job site. There are enough other hazards to watch out for. If you work or have worked in construction, you know what I am talking about.

How is carrying a firearm while on the job site a hazard? I've worked construction for a lot of my adult life and I don't know what you are talking about.

I just got done working on a job in Chester, PA.  Not a nice area, somewhat cleaned up from years ago, but still not a good area.

All of our help was hired out of the local union halls.  You have no idea what you are getting no matter how much you explain to the Business Agent (BA) you are on a short time shutdown and need hands that will work and most importantly show up for work.  

Most of the Laborers had jail tats including one with the tear under his eye (which from my understanding means he killed someone in the pen).  

Most lived locally in Chester and while being good hands for the most part were unknown people to me.  We have many tools on the job which if misused (like firearms) can be weapons.  We do drug testing and alcohol testing but that doesn't mean that someone quit long enough to pass the test or isn't going to go on a bender the next day and come in on meth, coke, or all drunk up.

Security at most of the facilities I work at are a joke.  Some even have "security" guards but they are also limited to what they can and cannot do.  Most are unarmed becuase of fears they may shoot someone and then the parent company that employs them may get sued.

So I stay armed almost all the time on the jobsite.  I wrote my companies "no guns on jobsite" law and if I violate it I am sure that my boss will show me the exit but guess what, I will probably be alive and not in a grave.  

I can tell your tons of stories about people coming in drunk and on drugs even after going through plant security.  

The last event was in Lake Charles, LA at a chemical plant near four or five major refineries (right before Rita hit).  Guy came in drunk, was covered for by his union buddies, and was caught when the shift started.  It ended after the police had to be called because he got violent.  

Had this individual had a gun, knife, etc. he could have done some serious harm to our personnel or the plant security that showed up to help subdue him.  He still injured one guard and one of our employees with his hands.  He had a BAC of .18 and that was taken hours later.  He passed out when the police arrived and guess what; he had been a suspect in a murder only one year earlier and had not been charged because of lack of evidence.  Good kind of guy.  

Since I am the "safety man" issues like these are often handed to me.  

In Chicago Heights, IL, another beautiful inner city area, we did a job where bullets often hit the plant at night and we were only allowed to work on certain things during the day because at night the locals got a little restless.  I did not havea firearm with me because of the crazy laws in IL but really wanted one on several occasions when things got a little dicey.  This is the same plant where several security guards and plant personnel were murdered for some platinumn that was onsite during one of our jobs.