Employer and Employee Duties and Responsibilities in California

California’s Labor Code, in Division 5, Part 1, Chapter 3, contains an area of law entitled, “Responsibilities and Duties of Employers and Employees.” Chapter 3 was added in 1973 by Chapter 993. Section 6400 requires every employer in this state to furnish employment and a place of employment that is safe and healthful for the employees therein.

For those on multiemployer worksites, both construction and nonconstruction, citations may be issued only to specified categories of employers when the division has evidence that an employee was exposed to a hazard in violation of any requirement enforceable by the division. In addition, these specified employers may be cited regardless of whether their own employees were exposed to the hazard.

Section 6401 requires every employer to furnish and use safety devices and safeguards, and shall adopt and use practices, means, methods, operations, and processes which are reasonably adequate to render such employment and place of employment safe and healthful. Every employer shall do every other thing reasonably necessary to protect the life, safety, and health of employees.

Section 6401.5 prohibits the salvage of materials while demolition is in progress on any building, structure, falsework, or scaffold more than three stories high or the equivalent height for which a permit is required.

Section 6401.7 requires every employer to establish, implement, and maintain an effective injury prevention program. The program must be written and include seven specified items. An employer is required to correct unsafe and unhealthy conditions and work practices in a timely manner based on the severity of the hazard. And the employer is required to train all employees.

The employer is required to keep appropriate records of steps taken to implement and maintain the program. The division is required to establish a list of high hazard industries using the methods prescribed in statute for identifying and targeting employers in high hazard industries. This section of law specifies a list of what constitutes “designated list of high hazard industries.” The Department of Industrial Relations must also establish a list of low hazard industries, and periodically review, and as necessary revise, that list.

The employer’s injury prevention program, as required by this section, must cover all of the employer’s employees and all other workers who the employer controls or directs and directly supervises on the job to the extent these workers are exposed to worksite and job assignment specific hazards.

In addition, the division is required to prepare a Model Injury and Illness Prevention Program for Non-High-Hazard Employment, and make copies of the model program prepared pursuant to this subdivision available to employers, upon request, for posting in the workplace. An employer who adopts and implements the model program prepared by the division pursuant to this paragraph in good faith will not be assessed a civil penalty for the first citation for a violation of this section issued after the employer’s adoption and implementation of the model program.

Section 6401.8 required the standards board to adopt standard that require a hospital licensed in this state to adopt a workplace violence prevention plan as a part of its injury and illness prevention plan to protect health care workers and other facility personnel from aggressive and violent behavior. The standards are required to contain certain provisions.

In addition, the division must annually post a report on its Internet Web site containing information regarding violent incidents at hospitals, that includes, but is not limited to, the total number of reports, and which specific hospitals filed reports, the outcome of any related inspection or investigation, the citations levied against a hospital based on a violent incident, and recommendations of the division on the prevention of violent incidents at hospitals.

Section 6401.9 defines the following terms: “emergency,” “engineering controls,” “log,” “plan,” “threat of violence,” “workplace violence,” and “work practice controls.” There are a number of employers, employees, and places of employment that are exempt from this section. In addition, an employer is required to establish, implement, and maintain an effective workplace violence prevention plan. The plan must be in writing and is required to include specified provisions.

Moreover, the employer is required to record information in a violent incident log for every workplace violence incident. The log must include specified information. The employer is required to provide effective training to employees. Training material appropriate in content and vocabulary to the educational level, literacy, and language of employees must be used. The annual training must include specified items.

Records of workplace violence hazard identification, evaluation, and correction must be created and maintained for a minimum of five years. The division must enforce this section by the issuance of a citation alleging a violation of this section and a notice of civil penalty in a manner consistent with the law.

Section 6402 prohibits an employer from requiring or permitting any employee to go or be in any employment or place of employment which is not safe and healthful. Section 6403 prohibits an employer from failing or neglecting to do specified tasks.

Section 6403.1 contains legislative findings and declarations for having access to a health care employer-level inventory of personal protective equipment in the event of a pandemic or other health emergency is vital to the health and safety of its health care workforce, as well as the general population, who both rely on the state’s health care workforce for care and are susceptible to disease transmission should members of the health care workforce needlessly be infected with transmissible disease.

Section 6403.3 defines the following terms: “employer,” and “personal protective equipment.” An employer must supply personal protective equipment to employees who provide direct patient care or provide services that directly support patient care in a general acute care hospital. And, an employer must ensure that employees use the personal protective equipment supplied to them. An employer is required to maintain a stockpile of specified equipment in the amount equal to three months of normal consumption.

Section 6403.5 states that, as part of the injury and illness prevention programs required, employers are required to adopt a patient protection and health care worker back and musculoskeletal injury prevention plan. The plan must include a safe patient handling policy component reflected in professional occupational safety guidelines for the protection of patients and health care workers in health care facilities. Also, an employer must maintain a safe patient handling policy at all times for all patient care units. This section defines the terms “lift team” “health care worker,” and “safe patient handling policy.”

Section 6404 prohibits an employer from occupying or maintaining any place of employment that is not safe and healthful. Section 6404.5 contains legislative findings and declarations that regulation of smoking in the workplace is a matter of statewide interest and concern.

An employer or owner-operator of an owner-operated business who permits any nonemployee access to their place of employment or owner-operated business on a regular basis has not acted knowingly or intentionally in violation of this section if the employer or owner-operator has taken specified reasonable steps to prevent smoking by a nonemployee.

This section defines the terms “reasonable steps,” “place of employment,” “private smokers’ lounge,” “smoking,” and “retail or wholesale tobacco shop.” The smoking prohibition set forth in this section constitutes a uniform statewide standard for regulating the smoking of tobacco products in enclosed places of employment and owner-operated businesses and supersedes and renders unnecessary the local enactment or enforcement of local ordinances regulating the smoking of tobacco products in enclosed places of employment and owner-operated businesses. There are specified provisions related to owner-occupied facilities.

Section 6405 prohibits any employer, owner, or lessee of any real property from constructing or causing to be constructed any place of employment that is not safe and healthful. Section 6406 prohibits any person from doing the following: (a) Remove, displace, damage, destroy or carry off any safety device, safeguard, notice, or warning, furnished for use in any employment or place of employment. (b) Interfere in any way with the use thereof by any other person. (c) Interfere with the use of any method or process adopted for the protection of any employee, including himself, in such employment, or place of employment. (d) Fail or neglect to do every other thing reasonably necessary to protect the life, safety, and health of employees.

Section 6407 requires every employer and every employee to comply with occupational safety and health standards and with all rules, regulations, and orders pursuant to this division which are applicable to their own actions and conduct. Section 6408 requires all employers to provide information to employees in the specified ways, as prescribed by authorized regulations:

Section 6409 requires every physician who attends any injured employee to file a complete report of that occupational injury or occupational illness in a manner prescribed by the administrative director of the Division of Workers’ Compensation. The report must include specified information. The term “occupational illness” is defined.

Section 6409.1 requires every employer to file a complete report of every occupational injury or occupational illness of each employee which results in lost time beyond the date of the injury or illness, or which requires medical treatment beyond first aid, with the Department of Industrial Relations or, if an insured employer, with the insurer, on a form prescribed for that purpose by the department.

The written report has to contain specified information related to the injury. In every case involving a serious injury or illness, or death, a report must be made immediately by the employer to the Division of Occupational Safety and Health by telephone or through a specified online mechanism established by the division for this purpose.

Section 6409.2 provides that, whenever a state, county, or local fire or police agency is called to an accident involving an employee covered by this part in which a serious injury or illness, or death occurs, the responding agency is required to immediately notify the nearest office of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health by telephone. Thereafter, the division must immediately notify the appropriate prosecuting authority of the accident.

Section 6409.3 specifies that the treatment administered for pesticide poisoning or a condition suspected as pesticide poisoning is to be deemed to be first aid treatment.

Section 6409.5 states that, whenever any local public fire agency has knowledge that a place of employment where garment manufacturing operations take place contains fire or safety hazards for which fire and injury prevention measures have not been taken in accordance with local fire and life safety ordinances, the agency may notify the Division of Occupational Safety and Health. However, this referral can be made only after the garment manufacturing employer has been given a reasonable amount of time to correct violations.

Section 6410 explains that the reports required must be made in the form and detail and within the time limits prescribed by reasonable rules and regulations adopted by the Department of Industrial Relations. All state and local government employers are required to maintain records and make reports in the same manner and to the same extent as required of other employers by this section.

Section 6410.1 states that it is the intent of the Legislature that the Division maintain strong workplace injury and illness reporting standards. Section 6410.2 requires the Division to monitor rulemaking and implementation of the United States Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses rule.

Section 6410.5 states that the reports required by specified code sections must contain, prominently stated, a statement set forth in Section 5401.7.  Section 6411 requires every employer or insurer receiving forms with directions from the Department of Industrial Relations to complete them to cause them to be properly filled out so as to answer fully and correctly each question propounded.

Section 6412 prohibits any report of injury or illness required from being open to public inspection or made public, nor can those reports be admissible as evidence in any adversary proceeding before the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board, with specified exceptions.

Section 6413 requires the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and every physician or surgeon who attends any injured state prisoner, to file with the Division of Occupational Safety and Health a complete report on specified forms, of every injury to each state prisoner, resulting from any labor performed by the prisoner unless disability resulting from such injury does not last through the day or does not require medical service other than ordinary first aid treatment.

Section 6413.2 provides that, with regard to any report required, the Division of Occupational Safety and Health may make recommendations to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of ways in which the department might improve the safety of the working conditions and work areas of state prisoners, and other safety matters. However, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is not required to comply with these recommendations.

Section 6413.5 specifies that any employer or physician who fails to comply with any provision of specified code sections may be assessed a civil penalty of not less than $50 nor more than $200 by the director or his or her designee if he or she finds a pattern or practice of violations, or a willful violation of any of these provisions. Penalty assessments may be contested.