The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Protecting America’s Workers Act reintroduced
U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney (CT-2), a member of the House Education and Labor Committee, has reintroduced the Protecting America’s Workers Act during the ninth anniversary of the deadly Kleen Energy natural gas explosion in Middletown.
The blast killed six workers and injured dozens of others on Feb. 7, 2010, at the plant on River Road. Something ignited 400,000 cubic feet of gas and air that had accumulated during a gas blow, when high-pressure natural gas is pushed through pipes to clear debris, according to investigators.
This week, Courtney was joined by Congressman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (VA-3), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, and Congresswoman Alma Adams (NC-12), chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, in reintroducing the legislation.
The Protecting America’s Workers Act would strengthen and modernize the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 by giving the Occupational Safety and Health Administration tools to ensure that employers promptly correct hazardous working conditions, protect workers from retaliation when they blow the whistle on unsafe working conditions, and hold employers accountable for violations that cause illness, death or serious injury to workers, according to a press release.
The OSHAct has not been meaningfully updated since it was passed in 1970, Courtney said.
“The explosion took the lives of six workers — including that of my friend Ronald Crabb, of Colchester, Conn. — and injured dozens more. Today, on the ninth anniversary of the accident, it’s appropriate that my colleagues and I reintroduce this legislation to make critical, decades-overdue updates to OSHA,” he said in a prepared statement.
The Protecting America’s Workers Act will:
⏩ Protect millions of workers by expanding OSHA coverage to state and local government employees in 25 states, and broadening OSHA coverage to include federal employees.
⏩ Ensure worker safety is protected in a timely manner by mandating that employers correct hazardous conditions while a citation for a serious, willful or repeat violation is being contested. Currently, the requirement to abate violations is stayed while a violation is litigated, leaving workers in harm’s way.
⏩ Reinstate an employer’s ongoing obligation to maintain accurate records of work-related illness and injuries, and reverses a Congressional Review Act resolution that undermined OSHA’s ability to enforce against employers who violate requirements to record workplace injuries and illnesses.
⏩ Improve whistleblower protections for workers who call attention to unsafe working conditions.
⏩ Update obsolete consensus standards that were incorporated by reference when OSHA was first enacted in 1970.
⏩ Deter high gravity violations by providing authority for increased civil monetary penalties for willful and serious violations that cause death or serious bodily injury.
⏩ Require employers to report injury and illness records to OSHA to provide the agency with data to effectively target unsafe workplaces.
⏩ 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. Criminal penalties are misdemeanors under current law.
⏩ Require OSHA to investigate all cases of death and serious injuries that occur within a place of employment.
⏩ Establish rights for families of workers who were killed on the job by giving families the right to meet with OSHA investigators, receive copies of citations, and to have an opportunity to make a statement before any settlement negotiations.
⏩ Improve protections for workers in state plans by allowing the Secretary of Labor to assert concurrent enforcement authority in those states where the plan is fails to meeting minimum requirements needed to protect workers’ safety and health, as recommended by a Government Accountability Office report.