# Wellspring: Workplace Health and Safety:

## Making employers publish the known risks for a given position, and keep those published risks up to date:

Employers shall publish, as part of the job description any job, a list of the hazards which arise from carrying out the job within the particular work environment provided by that employer. The list is only required to cover the hazards which may arise as a result of the nature/configuration of the particular work environment, and the nature of the equipment/tools/supplies provided by the employer for the carrying out of the job. The list is not required to cover hazards which arise from misuse, by the employees, of the nature/configuration of the environment/equipment/tools/supplies.

When the nature/configuration of the environment/equipment/tools/supplies provided by the employer change, the employer may update the hazard list and republish it to each employee whose job has been affected by the updated environment/equipment/tools/supplies.

Employees may bring actions before the courts in the form of "Undisclosed workplace hazard" complaints based on this published list of hazards.

### Cause of action: "Undisclosed workplace hazard":

When employees identify an alleged hazard which arises from carrying out their job as a result of the nature/configuration of the particular work environment/equipment/tools/supplies which has not been documented by the employer in the job description, any and all of the employees (whether or not their particular job description incurs the alleged hazard) shall have standing to file suit against the employer under the cause of action, "Undisclosed workplace hazard".

Upon judgment proceeding for the employees:
- They shall have redress in the form of declaratory relief, that the alleged hazard is in fact a hazard.
- They shall have redress in the form of an injunction against the employer to add the hazard to the list in the job description.
- They shall have good claim to a cause of action known as the "Unameliorated Hazard" claim.

## Making employers provide safe work environments:

Employers are expected to provide work places which demonstrate a **good faith** effort to ensure that any hazards which may reasonably arise from the nature/configuration of the particular environment/equipment/tools/supplies provided by the employer are ameliorated. Employers may demonstrate such good faith efforts by providing, for each of the hazards occasioned by the particular nature/configuration of the environment/equipment/tools/supplies, a method of using the environment/equipment/tools/supplies which:

- Basically the same as NAHA.

### Cause of action "Unameliorated Hazard":

Should any of the published hazards for a job description not have a good faith method provided which ameliorates the hazard, any and all of the employees (whether or not their particular job description incurs the alleged hazard) shall have standing to file suit against the employer under the cause of action, "Unameliorated Hazard".

Upon judgment proceeding for the employees:
- The employer shall have a grace period within which to provide such protections as are determined to be in good faith by the court.
- During this grace period, an injunction against the
  - The employer shall table a 

### Cause of action: "Unameliorated Hazard":

If any hazard arising from the published hazard list 

> [FIXME]: Obviously the employer cannot be made liable for all damages incurred while an employee works. But "causally due to the nature of the task" isn't a clear enough principle for the limitation of liability.

Workplaces should clearly publish risks for positions in detail. Any damages incurred while carrying out employment, which are causally due to the nature of the task of employment, which aren't listed among the published risks shall be grounds for legal action.

## Using the published list of employment risks to force employers to outlay capital on safety.

> [FIXME, EXPERIMENTAL]: This section is very difficult to get right. We want to ensure that employers outlay capital on safety equipment and infrastructure to ameliorate the known risks for the tasks they assign. But we also don't want to mandate that employers must use the absolute most cutting edge method for ameliorating any known risk. The question is, by what means shall we determine when "sufficient" effort/capital outlay has been made to free the employer from liability?

> [IDEA]: One compromise on this mechanism could be to make employers only liable for known risks that accompany the task which arise from the environment/infrastructure in which the task is carried out; and not those which arise from the performance of the task? This makes it the employer's responsibility to ensure the workplace/environment itself is safe, but leaves the responsibility for safety when carrying out the tasks to the employee.

On the basis of the published list of risks:

- An employee filling a position, who has **not** incurred an injury, may sue for equitable relief in the form of an injunction against the employer to provide adequate safety, if such safety is not provided. This suit does not reward compensation - it is an equitable remedy.
- An employee filling a position, who **has** incurred an injury, may sue for compensation.