The Trickle-Down Effect of OSHA'S At-Will Bathroom Regulation

by Marc Linder

In Void Where Prohibited, Marc Linder exposed OSHA's failure to protect worker's rights to urinate on company time. Five years after OSHA declared that right in a memorandum, Linder examines OSHA'S record of enforcement in Void Where Prohibited Revisited.

Void Where Prohibited mobilized public opinion to pressure the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue its 1998 memorandum declaring that the industrial sanitation standard "requires employers to make toilet facilities available so that employees can use them when they need to do so." (Previously, OSHA claimed that its requirement that employers provide toilets did not obligate them to let workers use those toilets.)

But was this establishment of at-will-bathroom breaks worth the cyberspace it was posted in? How do labor-protective regulations get enforced in a world of powerful employers opposed to government interference and an understaffed OSHA that fails to pursue complaints vigorously?

Five years on, Void Where Prohibited Revisited answers these questions. Linder analyzes all the citations that OSHA has issued to employers for violating their obligation to let workers go to the bathroom and interviews OSHA officials, labor union officers, workers, and employers. Since many who are free to got to the bathroom doubt stories about workers who have been forced to void on themselves or have been disciplined for using the toilet without permission, details from OSHA reports documenting these practices and the dispute at the Jim Bean bourbon plant in Kentucky receive special attention.

Marc Linder, a labor law professor at the University of Iowa who also worked at Texas Rural Legal Aid representing farm workers, has written widely on labor law, labor economics, labor relations, and labor history.

382 pages