NAM Blasts Protecting America’s Workers Act

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) has recently opposed S. 1580/H.R. 2067, the so called Protecting America’s Workers Act, saying the proposed overhaul of workplace safety laws is not the right approach to make workplaces safer. NAM said, The Protecting America’s Workers Act (PAWA) seeks to overhaul our nation’s workplace health and safety system by overturning an effective approach to promoting safer workplaces through cooperation between employers and the Occupational Safety and Health administration (OSHA)—an effort that started during the Clinton Administration.

Below are some of NAM’s talking points.

• For decades, America’s manufacturers have improved the safety of their workplaces. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, incident rates for workplace illnesses and injuries have improved 54% since 1994. During this same time frame, workplace fatalities in manufacturing facilities have decreased 38%.
• Current OSHA policy allows for penalty reductions for small companies, but the changes outlined in the PAWA would enact a more rigid penalty structure that does not consider the unique challenges facing small businesses.
• This bill does not recognize that the existing OSHA penalty structure calls for significant penalties for each serious, repeat, willful and failure-to-abate violation. OSHA has the authority to impose these sanctions regardless of whether there has been an injury, illness or death.
• There have been proposals to lower the criminal penalties threshold from “willful” to “knowing.” This vague definition of employer intent is unprecedented in OSHA law. These proposals may make employers liable for even unintentional OSHA infractions.

How Congress Can Help? By Opposing the Protecting America’s Workers Act (S. 1580/H.R. 2067). Congress should not abandon the current system that promotes cooperation between employers and OSHA. Instead, policymakers should recognize effective approaches to improving workplace safety by promoting outreach with employers and enhancing proven compliance assistance efforts.

Additional Information: Currently, there are neither requirements for OSHA compliance officers to be experienced in the industry they are inspecting nor requirements for the training of these inspectors. This lack of training for inspectors is problematic to employers who are concerned with the appropriateness of proposed abatement measures.

This legislation seeks to hold corporate officers responsible for workplace safety incidents. However, the approach taken by this legislation drastically changes the individual liability thresholds for criminal penalties under the OSH Act. Instead of defining the thresholds for accountability, the provisions in this legislation seek to implement a broad expansion of criminal liability without defining how responsibility would be asserted.