Who has the responsibility for providing bloodborne pathogens training to workers employed by staffing agencies which provide personnel to other employers?

OSHA considers personnel providers, who send their own employees to work at other facilities, to be employers whose employees may be exposed to hazards. Because personnel providers maintain a continuing relationship with their employees, but another employer (the client) creates and controls the hazard, there is a shared responsibility for assuring that these employees are protected from workplace hazards. The client employer has the primary responsibility for such protection, but the “lessor employer” likewise has a responsibility under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. In the context of OSHA’s standard on bloodborne pathogens, the personnel provider would be required to provide the general training outlined in the standard and the client employer would be responsible for providing site-specific training. The contract between the personnel provider and the client should clearly describe the training responsibilities of both parties in order to ensure that all training requirements of the standard are met.