According to a recent report, every day in the United States, approximately 343 workers die from hazardous working conditions. Shockingly, in 2021 alone, 5,190 workers lost their lives while on the job, Entrepreneurng.com.
These fatalities are not just limited to accidents, but occupational diseases are also a significant contributor. It is estimated that in 2021, around 120,000 deaths were attributed to such diseases. Since 1970, more than 429,000 workers have been killed on the job in the United States, but only 128 of those cases have been criminally prosecuted under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA).
This issue has sparked significant concerns, and there are increasing efforts to modernize OSHA. To this end, 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 new legislation is aimed at 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, have rocketed past the OSHA rules that are in place to protect people.
The Protecting America’s Workers Act includes various measures, such as expanding OSHA coverage to the estimated 8 million state and local government workers in 24 states not currently covered by OSHA.
The act also calls for reinstating an employer record-keeping rule of illnesses and injuries that was 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.
Furthermore, the bill would 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.
The report also highlights the disparities in workplace safety for different groups. For instance, the workplace fatality rate for Black workers 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.
Additionally, younger and older workers are also at higher risk for workplace fatalities. In 2021, 350 workers under the age of 25 died on the job, while workers over 65 have a risk of 2.3 times higher than other workers of dying on the job.
The Protecting America’s Workers Act 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, as earlier reported by the gaurdian.com.
