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Hey everyone, I’m Vince White. I’m an employment attorney in New York State and
I’m answering questions from avvo.com. This question just came through. “What are my
ergonomic rights as an employee?” I assume by ergonomic rights you mean your right to
a comfortable chair to situations like that and that going to be very different. A lot
of the trades, physical labor, things like that they are going to have ergonomic safety
regulations provided by OSHA, which is going to be a little bit outside of what I deal
with and I would contact OSHA about that. That’s why they exist they’re there to
protect your rights. Now for office workers certainly there’s certain safety issues
as well, it’s not as though OSHA abandoned you. There’s certain ergonomic guidelines
that they have to meet. If you’re referring essentially to your chair the comfort level
of your chair, special standing desk issues or various forms of chairs things like that,
that straighten the back, extend the thigh, protect you from kind of that repetitive motion
injury stuff like that. Essentially if you gave a disability that requires accommodation
and that accommodation is an ergonomic too or seat, or desk, whatever that might be,
that might be considered a reasonable accommodation and you might have a right to that. If the
ergonomic request you are making is not tied to a disability, it’s just something you
want for comfort or you believe its better and it’s not covered by an OSHA guideline
it’s probably not something your employer will be forced to get for you. They may, they
might be good people, they might do the right thing and get you the ergonomic chair you
want because they want to take care of their employees. But, barring some guideline or
some disabilities that you get an accommodation for, they’re probably not going to be forced
to do the right thing. I hope this clears things up. If that’s not what your question
was about, please feel free to clarify I will be happy to do another answer for you. Take
care.