House legislators reintroduce Protecting America's Workers Act

February 14th, 2019 by Dakota Software Staff

In late January, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a new version of the Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses final rule that eliminated the mandate for organizations with 250 or more employees to electronically submit information from OSHA Forms 300 and 301 each year.

At the time, the agency stated that the regulatory rollback was inspired by concerns over worker privacy protection, stating in a press release that the change in requirements would prevent "routine government collection of information that may be quite sensitive, including descriptions of workers' injuries and body parts affected." Yet many skeptics questioned the worker privacy rationale, as AFL-CIO Director Peg Seminario said the new rule would allow "employers to hide their injury records and keep workers, the public and OSHA in the dark about dangerous conditions in American workplaces."

Now some of the rule's critics in congress are attempting to reverse the recent recordkeeping rollback by reintroducing legislation that would reinstate the stricter "Volks" rule.

PAWA sponsored by 29 Democratic House members

Over two dozen Democratic lawmakers have signed on to the latest effort to pass the Protecting America's Workers Act, which has been unsuccessfully introduced in both houses of Congress 16 times over the last 15 years, but never gotten past the committee stage.

PAWA was first introduced by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in April 2004.

PAWA has been introduced in the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives, but would face an uphill battle in the Senate.

The latest version of the bill is sponsored by 29 Democratic House legislators, including Connecticut Rep. Joe Courtney, who introduced the legislation on Feb. 7, 2019. The date was chosen to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the Kleen Energy power plant explosion, which claimed the lives of six workers in Middletown, Connecticut, according to Safety and Health Magazine.

This bill would undo the rollback of OSHA's electronic recordkeeping rule and reinstate the Volks rule, which was narrowly repealed by a Congressional Review Act resolution in March 2017, and signed by President Donald Trump the following month.

The Volks rule allowed OSHA to cite employers for recordkeeping violations within five-and-a-half years of an incident occurring, as opposed to the six-month statute of limitations set out in the OSH Act.

Law would subject employers to more restrictions and harsher punishments

In addition to reinstating Volks, the most recent version of the Protecting America's Workers Act would also enact what Rep. Courtney called "critical, decades-overdue updates to OSHA," which include:

• Allowing individuals or organizations that knowingly commit OSHA violations that result in death or serious bodily harm to be charged with felonies, instead of only misdemeanors.
• Increasing the maximum and minimum civil penalties for certain categories of violations.
• Expanding OSHA's General Duty Clause to include anyone working in any establishment where the employer controls workplace conditions, as opposed to only applying to direct-hire employees.
• Mandating OSHA investigate cases of death or serious injury that occur at all workplaces covered under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.
• Requiring that employers abate hazardous conditions while a serious, willful or repeat citation is contested, which is not currently mandated.
• Enhancing whistleblower protections.
• Allowing victims' families more input in the process, including the ability to meet with OSHA investigators, receive copies of citations and make statements before a settlement negotiation.
• Allowing the Department of Labor to take over enforcement authority in State Plans that do not meet "minimum requirements needed to protect workers' safety and health, as recommended by" the Government Accountability Office.

"Every day, 14 employees go to work and never come home to their families due to fatal on-the-job injuries," Rep. Courtney said while speaking from prepared remarks, according to The Middletown Press. "The OSH Act made great strides in protecting American workers, but since it was enacted, the American workplace has modernized and diversified. The law should keep up with the realities that workers face on the job today. Our bill is focused on updates and compliance, not on petty, punitive measures against employers, and will ensure that today's workforce is empowered and protected by our nation's chief worker safety law."