SE Connecticut News

WASHINGTON, D.C. – To honor Workers’ Memorial Day, Rep. Courtney (CT-02), a senior member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and Rep. Bobby Scott (VA-03), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, introduced the Protecting America’s Workers Act.

This bill would meaningfully strengthen and modernize the Occupation Safety and Health Act for the first time in over 50 years by ensuring employers promptly correct hazardous working conditions, protect whistleblowers from retaliation, and hold unscrupulous employers accountable for violations that cause illness, serious injury, or death to workers. The bill is co-sponsored by 12 lawmakers.

"It’s fitting that we are reintroducing the Protecting America's Workers Act on Workers’ Memorial Day and honor all who have died or been injured on the job,” said Rep. Joe Courtney (CT-02), a senior member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. “While the Occupation Safety and Health Act has helped protect Americans for generations, too many workers are still facing injury, illness, or death. Congress must pass the Protecting America’s Workers Act to address the shortfalls in the law that have hamstrung further progress towards safer workplaces.”

"Today, on Workers Memorial Day, we are called upon to honor the workers who have been killed or injured on the job and to prevent future tragedies by making workplaces safer,” said Rep. Bobby Scott (VA-03), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. “The Protecting America's Workers Act makes long overdue improvements to the enforcement provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, expands coverage to millions of workers who are currently excluded from the law's protections, and strengthens whistleblower protections. These reforms are critical to deterring the most serious violations that endanger workers’ safety on the job. Passing this bill would be a major step toward ensuring our nation's workers can do their jobs and come home safely to their families at the end of the day.”

The legislation is particularly important to the eastern Connecticut community after six workers died at an explosion at the Kleen Energy Systems power plant in Middletown, Connecticut in 2010.

“I’ve seen the devastation that unsafe workplaces can bring upon a family. Thirteen years ago, an explosion at an energy plant in Connecticut left six workers dead and dozens injured. Some of the workers who died were my friends, and I watched as their families fought for justice and accountability for years afterwards. Their story, and the horrifying reality that hundreds of workers die each day as a result of hazards faced at work, is why I am a champion for the Protecting America’s Workers Act,” Courtney added.

Specifically, the Protecting America’s Workers Act will:

1. Protect millions of workers by expanding OSHA coverage to 8 million state and local government employees in 24 states who currently have no right to a safe workplace;
2. Ensure worker safety is protected by mandating that employers correct hazardous conditions in a timely manner;
3. Reinstate an employer’s ongoing obligation to maintain accurate records of work-related illness and injuries, and reverses a Trump era Congressional Review Act resolution that undermined OSHA’s ability to hold employers accountable who violate requirements to record workplace injuries and illnesses;
4. Improve whistleblower protection for workers who face retaliation for calling attention to unsafe working conditions;
5. Update obsolete consensus standards that were adopted when OSHA was first enacted in 1970;
6. Deter “high gravity” violations by providing authority for increased civil monetary penalties for serious or willful violations that cause death or serious bodily injury;
7. Expand injury and illness records that employers are required to maintain and report in order to enable OSHA to more effectively target unsafe workplaces;
8. Authorize felony penalties against employers who knowingly commit OSHA violations that result in death or serious bodily injury and extend such penalties to corporate officers and directors;
9. Require OSHA to investigate all cases of death and serious injuries that occur within a place of employment;
10. Establish rights for families of workers who were killed on the job by giving them the right to meet with OSHA investigators, receive copies of citations, and to have an opportunity to make a statement before any settlement negotiations; and
11. Improve protections for workers in state OSHA plans by allowing the Secretary of Labor to assert concurrent enforcement authority in those states where the state OSHA program fails to meet minimum requirements needed to protect workers’ safety and health.

The bill is co-sponsored by 12 lawmakers, including Reps: Bobby Scott; Debbie Wasserman Schultz; Betty McCollum; Raul Grijalva; Jan Schakowsky; Suzanne Bonamici; Alma Adams; Kathy Castor; Joseph Morelle; Ilhan Omar; John Larson; and Jahana Hayes.

To read a fact sheet on the bill, click here.

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Economy & Jobs

Original source can be found here.