Workplace Violence Legal Analysis

Legal Analysis

The issues of workplace violence have become a major attention getter over the past decade. With an annual average of nearly nine hundred homicides, within the workplace and over a million employees suffering from assaults in the United States alone. According to the Office of Inspector General, (Report No 2E-10-105-0002) these facts along with other factors lead to the beginning of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), issuing the workplace violence citations under the General Duty Clause in 1993. The clause ensured that every employer would be required to provide a safe workplace environment for each employee that was covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. The clause reads as follows

This law states that “every health care workplace must adopt and implement a plan to reasonably prevent and protect employees from violence at that setting.” Before adopting a plan, a health care employer must conduct an assessment to look for potential hazards for violence. The employer may consider guidelines promulgated by relevant state agencies and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The adopted plan must then address the security considerations brought to light by the assessment. The employer must review this plan at least once every three years. The employer must then report to the state whether or not it made changes to the plan and why. Other states that have adopted health care workplace violence prevention laws include Washington and New Jersey. Connecticut also recently adopted regulations similar to the Illinois. Workplace Violence was the cause of the New York Legislature to enact the Workplace Violence Prevention Act (WVPA) in 2006. The purpose of this legislation is to ensure that the risk of workplace assaults and homicides is evaluated by affected public employers and their employees and that such employers design and implement workplace violence protection programs to prevent and minimize the hazard of workplace violence to public employees. Under this law, public employers with two or more permanent employees must evaluate the current

The Federal Laws which govern crimes, criminal procedures, extortion, and threats against federal, states if Federal employees are threatened or killed on the job while acting in their official capacity, there are now stricter, more comprehensive statutes which provide for criminal sanctions under Federal law (Section 1114 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code). In 1996, only certain officers and employees of the United States were covered under the Department of Justice regulations regarding crimes against Federal employees. This included Department of Labor (DOL) employees assigned to perform investigative, inspection, or law enforcement functions. In 1994 the statute was amended to include the Office of Workers ' Compensation Programs (OWCP) due to a large number of threats and incidents which occurred in that agency. Agencies which were not specifically covered received no protection under Federal