[Nhcoll-l] TY for excellent safety protection program details

[Kathryn Makos]

Dear Dirk and all,

Thank you for expanding upon your facility's extensive worker/visitor safety
programs, and I apologize for my initial email; I wasn't intending to be
critical just wanted to expand upon the complications with this issue here
in US.  Likewise, US Workers Comp covers workplace injuries/illnesses for
most people under the facility's responsibility (agreements with interns,
postdocs and visiting scientists included).  The pregnancy angle introduces
the possible rights of offspring to sue, and that angle is usually covered
by a facility's legal and/or human resources department.  The US Dept of
Justice (and any individual State justice dept) has legal guidance on this
issue should anyone find their employer in need of this.

Kathy Makos 

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2015 09:13:38 +0100
From: Dirk Neumann <dirk.neumann at zsm.mwn.de>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Protecting pregnant workers or others with
	certain health conditions
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Message-ID: <54E1A6B2.40101 at zsm.mwn.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed

Dear Kathryn,
deal all,

as I said, we do not sign away our responsibilities for permanent staff:

1. In the case that a colleague of our lab team would become pregnant, we
would hire a substitute employee (ideally a future PhD candidate) that could
replace her. In fact, this is far beyond our legal responsibility. All
people working in the lab receive a thorough security advice which needs to
be signed. This protects us as institute from wrongdoing of misbehaving
individuals (and sadly there is experience especially from Universities in
Munich why this is necessary). The reason is, that we do have a different
legal system here, as already pointed out. So you cannot compare directly.
Main difference is: in case of a severe accident, not the employee jumps in,
but the Employer's Liability Insurance Association (one of those insurance
you have to take ... and pays not only your bills but also for recovery in
case of severe accidents).

2. This is completely different for a visitor, as he/she is (as a matter of
fact) and can not be insured under our Employer's Liability Insurance
Association.

Therefore, we need to exclude any liability for visitors working in our
collection or the lab. Of course, he receives the same thorough security
advices as our employees, the same "safe and healthful" workplace as for all
other colleagues and we explicitly inform visitors about possible hazards
and risk they can't know and maybe wouldn't expect. But visitors are not
covered under any insurance (unless the one of his/her employee, if his/her
visit is an official trip and thus the "visit" falls into the responsibility
the respective employer). Thus, especially if your institution could be sued
for wrongdoing of external people "misbehaving" for whatever reason
on/inside your compound, you should exclude liability and responsibility as
far as possible.

But as I said, individual measures need to be considered under respective
national laws. Part of these considerations should be a liability exclusion
to restrict the accountability of your institution towards visitors.

Hope this further clarifies and helps excluding potential misinterpretation
of my previous posting ...
All the best

Dirk