Legal Question in Business Law in Pennsylvania

Employer Problem

I have a question on employee safety. I most recently had to keep watch on our composter and it over flowed, I contacted the owner of the business and his solution to fix the problem was to throw newspaper on it and he would then get it after it dried. I feel that this is a duty that a professional cleaning team should have done due to the fact we were dealing with human waste, which could potentially infect or harm one of us. What should I do about this situation and could I sue if needed?


Asked on 7/23/08, 4:20 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys

Doug Harhai The Law Office of Douglas Harhai, LLC

Re: Employer Problem

What kind of composter do you run? Human waste? This sounds very strange. Do you work at a public sewage plant? (I hope that you do not work at a farm...if so, call me).

You haven't posted enough facts here. Is the 'owner of the business' your boss (are you his employee) or are you a subcontractor? Municipal or private sector? What industry? Why would you be composting human waste? My mother has a compost pile but it is limited to banana peels and grass clippings--the human waste part is a bit odd. However, maybe not so odd for a worker at a waste processing plant, in which case, processing human waste is the name of the game.

As to your rights to sue, I don't have enough information yet to render an opinion. In general, you have to have damages to sue. If you are a female receptionist and he made you engage in waste cleanup while male superiors stood by and laughed, I would say that you have a claim; here, however, you have not told us what your normal job duties are. Are you a supervisor with higher responsibility? Is throwing newspaper over the waste so shocking as to rise to actionable conduct? I don't know. If you had to clean out the human waste, that would be worse, no doubt, however note that plumbers do it all of the time. It all depends on the context of your job duties.

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Answered on 7/23/08, 9:37 pm


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