Responsibilities of Employers
For the purposes of this section, an employer is an individual or
incorporated entity that pays wages or salaries to workers, or is a
self-employed worker (an individual who defines his own duties and
schedule).
Employers must enforce a policy which assures that workers whose
competent performance is directly necessary to maintain the physical
safety of others are not asked or allowed to work a schedule that can
be expected to compromise their alertness or judgement. Specifically,
the work schedule is so limited for any worker whose assigned
activities include the operation of machinery when common errors
endanger others, the manipulation of hazardous substances when common
errors endanger others, the performance of medical duties, or the
performance of guard or field law enforcement duties. The work
schedule of such a worker must provide for at least 8 contiguous hours
of sleep in any 24 hour period and 32 contiguous hours without
work-related responsibilities in any 7 day period. If the period
designated for sleep is shifted by four or more hours earlier or later
over the course of a week, then for a period of 72 hours following
attainment of the four hour shift threshold, the worker cannot be
assigned any duties the competent performance of which is directly
necessary to maintain the physical safety of others.
The above scheduling constraints do not apply to the military in time
of war, or to military training that affects only active military
personnel, or to workers fulfilling government contracts or workers
for monopolies, during declared war or natural disaster, when the
government contract or monopoly work directly aids the wartime effort
or emergency response to natural disaster.
Employers must through a means of their choice, but subject to
subsequent scrutiny in legal proceedings, verify the fitness for duty
of workers with duties the competent performance of which is directly
necessary to maintain the physical safety of others.
Employers must assure that each worker is informed of the rules of
his workplace(s), and of the known dangers of his workplace and duties.
The employer must assure that a thoroughgoing investigation of the
dangers of the workplaces is performed.
Except when a worker is self-employed, an employer must pay a worker
for all medical costs and unavoidably lost earnings if he sustains a
physical injury in a workplace controlled by the employer while
tending to his duties of employment and conforming to the law and the
rules of that workplace.
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This is a preliminary draft. Pending changes are in The To-Do List