Why can Safeway Randall's unsafe worksites hurt their employees and get away on a technicality?

Answer 1

Previous answer from some idiot who apparently is an economics major of some kind, who quite obviously has NO clue about working or running a business and seems to think issues such as work place safety are not the responsibility of the work place. As for the answer to this question. It highly depends on the circumstances that led to the accident. Most work places have a strict code of safety, such as steel toed shoes or steel bottomed, hard hats, goggles, face masks, respirators, these all depend on the type of job and workplace.

Most places outside of construction have work place safety rules that coincide with an insurance underwriter of that particular business which works hand in hand with workers compensation to determine what constitutes reasonable workplace safety. Safety is everyone's responsibility, however, it is the company that is responsible for enforcing a minimum standard. Such as guard rails on open stairs, or hazard warnings for whatever hazard you can think of at a given job site. There is also in some situations safety training provided for some kinds of jobs, like oil field workers...H2S training for example. St Johns Ambulance is another. Such minimums before you can even submit a resume. As for Safeway without knowing the details as to what you consider unsafe, that is subjective. It boils down to worker responsibility for safety. For example, if you decide to pick up a heavy box without bending at the knees and you hurt your back, that is your own fault. However, if Safeway makes you pick up a heavy object that is over a certain weight and you hurt your back in spite of lifting from the legs, that will likely be Safeway's fault, though in some courts of law, the onus would be on the worker failing to refuse to pick up the heavier object. This is a fine line example, and highly dependent of the employer and employee. However, as I pointed out earlier, workers comp and insurance underwriters would likely side with the employee if injuries happened.

Also, if a worker hurts themselves on the job by disregarding common sense or ignoring safety protocols, that is the worker's responsibility. Negligence is not an excuse. You can wire your home to remove all the ground wires to every outlet, but your home insurance will not compensate you if a fire takes out your home because of this modification.

Workplace safety is everyone's responsibility.