Sponsors (30)
Official title: To amend the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 to expand coverage under the Act, to increase protections for whistleblowers, to increase penalties for high gravity violations, to adjust penalties for inflation, to provide rights for victims or their family members, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 28, 2025 by Joe Courtney · Last progress April 28, 2025
The bill substantially strengthens worker safety, transparency, and enforcement—giving employees faster protections and remedies—at the cost of much higher compliance, reporting, criminal and civil penalties, and state‑federal enforcement friction that will raise costs and legal risks for employers (especially small businesses) and impose administrative burdens on states and taxpayers.
Federal, state, and local public employees (and workers in high‑risk industries like healthcare, construction, and transportation) gain explicit OSHA coverage and stronger protections for reporting hazards and refusing dangerous work, increasing worker safety and reducing retaliation risk.
Workers who experience retaliation or unsafe working conditions get faster, clearer enforcement and remedies (shorter filing/decision deadlines, reinstatement/back pay, petition/review procedures, victims’ participation), improving chances of timely relief.
Mandatory prompt employer reporting of serious injuries/deaths and public, searchable access to injury/illness reports increases transparency so workers, communities, and regulators can identify and address hazardous employers more quickly.
Employers—especially small businesses, local governments, and taxpayers—face substantially higher compliance costs, expanded recordkeeping/reporting burdens, and much larger potential fines (including aggregate penalties per exposed person), risking severe financial impact for single incidents.
Criminalizing certain safety violations and exposing officers/directors to imprisonment and liability may increase litigation and insurance costs and could deter entrepreneurship or hiring at small firms.
Short administrative deadlines and limits on stays (including potential early reinstatement obligations) can force rushed investigations, operational disruption, and require employers to act before appeals are resolved.
Based on analysis of 12 sections of legislative text.
Clarifies OSHA covers public employers, expands worker protections and reporting, tightens state plan oversight, and increases enforcement and public reporting requirements.
Expands federal workplace safety law to explicitly cover public employers (the United States, States, and political subdivisions), strengthens worker protections against retaliation, and tightens reporting, standard-setting, and enforcement procedures. It creates new procedures for federal agencies to certify equivalent safety programs, changes how State OSHA plans are reviewed and enforced, and sets deadlines and timelines for investigations, petitions, and state plan conformity. The bill requires broader employer duties to eliminate recognized hazards, new employer reporting and public data publication of injury and illness records, enhanced training and grant programs, faster federal reassertion of enforcement against state plans that underperform, and specific effective-date rules for state and non‑state workplaces.