Can an employee refuse to work because of safety concerns?
On OSHA’s “worker” page of its website, it expressly instructs employees to approach their employer first when they believe that working conditions are unsafe or unhealthy. OSHA states, “refusing to do a job because of potentially unsafe workplace conditions is not ordinarily an employee right under the OSHA Act.” OSHA goes on to state that “employees do have the right to refuse to do a job if they believe in good faith that they are exposed to imminent danger, and good faith means that even if an imminent danger is not found to exist, the worker had reasonable grounds to believe that it did exist.” OSHA discourages employees from walking off the job and states that the employee must generally satisfy four conditions to do so, including 1) asking the employer to eliminate the danger, and the employer then refusing to do so; 2) the employee genuinely believing that an imminent danger existed and the employee did not refuse to work for other reasons; 3) a situation where a reasonable per
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