Sponsors (13)
The bill significantly strengthens worker safety, whistleblower protections, reporting, and enforcement—improving prevention and accountability—but does so at the cost of sizable compliance, administrative, and litigation burdens for employers and governments and increased resource demands on enforcement agencies and taxpayers.
Workers across industries (construction, transportation, healthcare, and other on-site employees) gain substantially stronger, enforceable anti‑retaliation and whistleblower protections, clearer refusal-of-danger rules, and a faster complaint process that can return workers to jobs and award back pay and damages.
Federal, state, and local government employees are explicitly covered by OSHA and the bill creates a clearer, time-limited certification/rescission process (including 90‑day decisions) for other federal agencies, improving coverage and regulatory certainty for public‑sector workers.
Workers benefit from faster incident reporting, mandatory prompt OSHA investigations of serious incidents and deaths, public availability of employer injury reports, and higher civil/criminal penalties for willful, repeated, or deadly violations—strengthening prevention and deterrence.
Small businesses and other employers face substantially higher compliance, reporting, remediation, litigation, and insurance costs (including back pay, reinstatement, damages, and criminal exposure), which can reduce hiring, raise prices, or strain finances.
State and local governments will incur significant administrative and budgetary burdens to amend plans, host reviews, and meet faster federal timelines—potentially diverting resources or risking federal reassertion of enforcement.
OSHA, the Department of Labor, and adjudicatory bodies face increased caseloads and strict 90‑day deadlines that could strain resources and lead to rushed or less thorough investigations and hearings.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Strengthens OSHA by expanding employer coverage to governments, boosting whistleblower protections, increasing reporting/recordkeeping, tightening State plan oversight, and adding training/grant authority.
Official title: 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, 2026 by Bernard Sanders · Last progress April 28, 2026
Expands and strengthens the Occupational Safety and Health Act by explicitly making the United States, States, and political subdivisions employers under OSHA; creating a new category for authorized employee representatives; and giving the Secretary of Labor a formal certification process to cede or reassert OSHA jurisdiction where another federal agency provides equal protection. It broadens whistleblower and refusal-to-work protections, requires enhanced employer reporting and recordkeeping (including prompt notice of severe injuries and annual electronic reporting), mandates training and grant authority focused on employee rights and high-risk groups, tightens state-plan oversight with new GAO reviews, and sets staggered effective dates so states must amend approved plans within a year while workplaces in non‑plan states get up to 36 months to comply.