Liability waivers circumventing OSHA?
This is a question of pure curiosity. I’m not a business I don’t have employees but for some reason I keep thinking about this question.
I’ve been doing a lot of research about press safety (if my post lower down the list doesn’t give me away) and I’ve been curious about the OSHA laws because when I lived in Minneapolis there were many commercial letterpress shops. Many were large enough and prominent enough that I cannot imagine OSHA didn’t come into play. Studio on Fire had dozens and dozens of machines (amazing place btw).
Could the law about employees operating dangerous presses be circumvented by having employees that wish to operate them signing a waiver relinquishing liability for that particular machine or is simply asking an employee to do this illegal?
I often assumed that if an employee was enthusiastic about using the press they may be willing to give up liability for mentorship. I know a friend who interned at a shop and now works there as an operator but I never asked him if he had to sign such a waiver or whether he was simply working illegally.
This is utterly hypothetical, just wondering.
to give you the short answer to your question: OSHA does not recognize employee waivers or transfers of liability to employees for any reason.
More broadly, it is basically never legal in the US for rights or protections specifically guaranteed by law to be circumvented by waiver.
There is a reason that the platen press has evolved from what you see in the first image here to the second, and it is more a legal issue than a functional one.
Daniel Morris
The Arm Letterpress
Brooklyn, NY
That is because Studio on Fire runs heidelberg cylinders and platen presses. Also vandercooks. and table top presses plus the art dept. with PP station. I’m fairly sure Ben is the only one who runs the floor model handfeed and he is the owner. It’s not that those presses won’t grab, pinch, or hurt the operator. Ben carries liability insurance and other required coverage. OSHA visits our shop regularly. Our presses have all the required guards and cages. All the other commercial shops I have visited would pass inspections too. If you are referring to commercial letterpress shops as the trade shops such as Embossing+, Larkin, etc. they are not really a commercial letterpress shops although they do have letterpress’s, they don’t print….they die cut, foil stamp, emboss/deboss, fold & glue. Studio on Fire and Angelbomb are studios….is that the same as a commercial letterpress shop? .They print on letterpresses and probably diecut and emboss too.
Great to know! I’ve really been wondering about it. It’s likely more than a decade off, but I love the idea of being a part of a center for the book arts to pass on the craft. So I just wanted to see if there was any legal way to have these presses in operation and what liabilities are involved in things like taking on an apprentice. The skills are obviously being passed on in one way or another so there are clearly people putting themselves on the line to train others. It suddenly makes sense why I could never find a C&P at a university and why my apprenticeships involved cylinder presses not platens.
Don’t worry, I have no plans in taking on an apprentice at my level or starting up a commercial shop within any recent time. I just think it’s important to know these things well before they become an issue because obviously ignorance is no excuse for negligence.