Sponsors (19)
Introduced April 28, 2025 by Joe Courtney · Last progress April 28, 2025
The bill strengthens worker safety and whistleblower protections and increases enforcement transparency and penalties, but it does so by imposing substantial new compliance, administrative, and legal burdens on employers and government agencies while risking rushed enforcement and uneven rollout across States.
Workers who report injuries, unsafe conditions, or participate in safety processes (including employee representatives) gain stronger, explicit protections from discharge and retaliation and access to remedies (reinstatement, back pay, damages, attorneys' fees, record expungement).
All employees gain stronger enforceable safety protections through expanded reporting requirements, public searchable reports of severe injuries/deaths, counting each exposed person as a separate violation, increased civil penalties with inflation adjustments, and criminal penalties for knowing violations that cause serious harm or death.
Workers and employers receive faster determinations and dispute resolution because the bill sets deadlines for administrative complaints, investigations, and hazard-request evaluations and preserves inspection authority during contests.
Employers (including federal, State, and local governments) and small businesses face substantially higher compliance, reporting, recordkeeping, investigation-cooperation, and penalty costs that can strain budgets and operations.
Tight statutory deadlines for rulemaking, investigations, hearings, rescission petitions, and standard updates risk straining OSHA and State agency resources and lead to rushed or underdeveloped decisions and regulations.
Expanded procedural rights for employee representatives, broad nonwaiver and arbitration prohibitions, and provisions that can make preliminary orders final create increased litigation risk and raise due-process concerns for employers and respondents.
Based on analysis of 12 sections of legislative text.
Strengthens and expands OSHA coverage, worker protections, reporting and enforcement duties; requires State-plan updates and adds NIOSH training/grant authority.
Expands and tightens the Occupational Safety and Health Act to increase worker protections, broaden who counts as an "employer," strengthen anti-retaliation rules, require faster and clearer incident reporting, and boost federal oversight of State OSHA plans. It also requires updates to incorporated consensus standards, creates NIOSH education/training and grant authority, and sets deadlines for State plan conformity and when the changes take effect in non‑plan States. The bill gives the Secretary of Labor more authority to investigate and issue orders in retaliation claims, to reassert enforcement over State plans in some cases, and to certify that other federal agency standards provide equivalent protection; it also increases employer recordkeeping and reporting duties and bars new rules from reducing existing protections.