The Construction Institute's Board of Directors has endorsed a new bill known as The Protecting America’s Workers Act H.R 2067 (PAWA) which calls for higher standards to protect the nation’ s labor force.

Nearly 16 US workers die each and every day at work, another 134 die from work-related disease. An estimated 11,500 private-sector workers have a nonfatal work-related injury or illness each day. Every day Approximately 9,000 workers are treated in emergency departments for occupational injuries, and approximately 200 are hospitalized.

The Protecting America’s Workers Act will assure that workers now excluded from federal work safety protections [fire, police, EMTS for example] are covered by federal health and safety laws, increase penalties for those companies that break job health and safety rules, strengthen protections for whistleblowers, and enhance the role of victims' families in the right to know about workplace safety violations.

Introduced by Rep. Lynn Woolsey the Protecting America’s Workers Act would:

Protect More Workers

• Expand OSHA coverage to state and local public employees such as fire MTS and other public safety workers as well as all federal workers.
• Expand OSHA coverage to airline and railroad employees, and Department of Energy contractors.

Strengthen Health and Safety Penalties

• Raise civil penalties and indexes those penalties to inflation.
• Establish mandatory minimum penalties for violations that cause death.
• Allow felony prosecutions against employers who commit willful violations that result in death or serious bodily injury, and extends such penalties to responsible corporate officers.
• Require OSHA to investigate all cases of death and serious injuries (i.e. incidents that result in the hospitalization of 2 or more employees).

Improve Whistleblower Protections

• Codify regulations for the right to refuse to do hazardous work.
• Spell out that employees cannot be discriminated against for reporting injuries, illnesses or unsafe conditions, and brings the procedures for investigating and adjudicating discrimination complaints into line with other safety and health and whistleblower laws.

Consent to families of Victims to play a defined role when there is a Workplace fatality

• Provide workers and employee representatives the right to contest OSHA’s failure to issue citations, and proposed penalties. to object to a modification or withdrawal of a citation,
• Give injured workers, their families and families of workers who died in work-related incidents the right to meet with investigators, receive copies of citations, and to have an opportunity to make a statement before any settlement negotiations.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been chronically understaffed and underfunded and has not made significant advances on issues ranging from silicosis to carbon monoxide poisoning to chemical explosions. The Protecting America's Workers Act” (PAWA) takes us in a new direction.