Every day 343 workers die from hazardous working conditions in the US. In 2021, the latest year with data available, 5,190 workers in the US were killed on the job and an estimated 120,000 deaths were attributed to occupational diseases.
Since 1970, more than 429,000 workers have been killed on the job, but only 128 of those cases have been criminally prosecuted under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (Osha).
Now a new report and reintroduced federal legislation is pushing to modernize Osha.
Democratic congressmen Joe Courtney and Bobby Scott have co-authored the Protecting America’s Workers Act, which was reintroduced to Congress on 28 April, on Workers’ Memorial Day.
“The history of Osha shows that there really is a systemic problem in terms of that mission of getting the rules aligned with the evolving technology that goes into a whole host of sectors in the US economy, whether it’s home construction, healthcare settings, manufacturing, the new processes, the new chemicals, the new machinery that as part of a very dynamic economy, it’s just kind of rocketed past the Osha rules that are in place to protect people,” said Courtney.
“It’s just really trying to get a system of workforce protection that is really connected to the actual workplaces that people are going to every day in the 21st century.”
The bill includes expanding Osha coverage to the estimated 8 million state and local government workers in 24 states not currently covered by Osha, reinstating an employer record-keeping rule of illnesses and injuries rolled back under the Trump administration, providing authority for increased civil penalties for serious Osha violations, and authorizing felony penalties against employers who knowingly commit Osha violations that result in the death or serious harm of a worker. The bill would also establish rights for families who lose a loved one to a workplace fatality and require Osha to investigate all cases of death or serious injury that occur in a workplace.
The AFL-CIO’s Death on the Job 2023 report, released on 26 April, outlines the “toll of neglect” that comes from inadequately addressing workplace safety issues amid aggressive opposition from industry groups and employers against improving and enforcing workers protections.
The report cites low civil penalties for safety violations issued by Osha, understaffing and underfunding at Osha, the millions of workers who are currently not covered under Osha which include independent contractors and federal, state and local public workers, inadequate retaliation protections for workers to speak out and report safety issues, and the need to improve and expand data on worker injuries and illnesses.
For Black workers, the workplace fatality rate increased from 3.5 per 100,000 workers in 2020 to 4.0 in 2021, the highest rate in a decade, while Latino workers currently have a worker fatality rate of 4.5 per every 100,000 workers, 25% higher than the national average.
Younger and older workers are at higher risk for workplace fatalities. Three hundred and fifty workers under the age of 25 died on the job in 2021, while workers over 65 have a risk of 2.3 times higher than other workers of dying on the job.
Courtney cited a 2010 incident in Connecticut where six workers were killed in an explosion at a Kleen Energy Systems power plant during cleanup of debris in pipes as an example of an avoidable and tragic workplace fatality incident.
“As the process of an investigation went on, it was clear that what caused that was really very well known, unsafe practices, that the Chemical Safety Board, which is a sort of an arm of OshaA, had long identified as being the wrong way to clean the tubes,” he said.
The legislation has been introduced numerous times in Congress over the past two decades. Senator Pat Murray of Washington called the legislation “long overdue” when she was reintroducing it in 2013. Joe Biden was a co-sponsor of previous versions of the bill while serving in the Senate.
In 2009 testimony in support of the bill, Osha’s assistant secretary David Michaels said the 1970 Osha Act was “tragically outdated and inadequate”, and yet few to no changes or updates have been made in over 50 years since its passage.
Courtney noted the political challenges faced in passing the Protecting America’s Workers Act given the current House is under Republican control. But a companion bill in the Senate will be introduced and Courtney said it was important to keep introducing the bill to keep the issues visible.
“I think that at some point, the external pressure is going to reach the breaking point in terms of getting this place to move,” he said.
