Sponsors (18)
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
The bill strengthens worker safety, whistleblower protections, training, and enforcement transparency across public and private workplaces, but does so at the cost of substantial new compliance, administrative, and enforcement burdens for employers and government that may produce uneven implementation and more litigation.
Workers across federal, state, local, and private workplaces (including construction, transportation, and healthcare) gain clearer and expanded OSHA protections—explicit coverage for public employees, stronger anti‑retaliation and refusal protections, mandatory incident reporting, and requirements that states update plans to align with federal protections.
Workers and the public get stronger enforcement and transparency—higher civil and criminal penalties for willful/repeated or deadly violations, separate violations for each exposed employee, public electronic employer injury reports, and consideration of cross‑state violation histories to deter serial violators.
Employers and governments receive clearer timelines and processes—90‑day deadlines for certain agency certification/rescission decisions and whistleblower complaint actions, 90‑day and 36‑month phased compliance windows for state-plan and non‑state-plan jurisdictions, and rules for when the Secretary reasserts federal enforcement—giving more predictable regulatory timing.
State and local governments, employers (especially small businesses), and taxpayers face substantially higher compliance, reporting, training, legal, and insurance costs from expanded coverage, electronic reporting, higher penalties, NIOSH determinations, and shortened abatement rules.
Federal and state agencies (OSHA, Department of Labor, state-plan agencies) will face heavier workloads and higher budgetary needs from increased complaints, tighter statutory deadlines, GAO reviews, training grants, and more frequent investigations, risking slower processing in other program areas or the need for additional appropriations.
The bill creates potential jurisdictional complexity and uneven enforcement for multi‑state employers—ceding to other federal agencies where allowed, staggered state effective dates, and cross‑state repeated‑violation rules may produce inconsistent standards or compliance challenges across states.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Strengthens OSHA protections: expands who counts as an employer, tightens anti‑retaliation and reporting rules, requires State plan updates, and increases enforcement and review powers.
Makes major changes to the Occupational Safety and Health Act to broaden who counts as an "employer," strengthen worker anti‑retaliation rights, tighten employer reporting and recordkeeping, create a formal process for other federal agencies to be certified as providing equivalent protections, and set timelines for State OSHA plan updates. It also requires reviews of State plan performance, expands NIOSH hazard-determination duties, funds targeted training grants, and phases the effective dates for State and non‑State jurisdictions. Overall, the bill increases worker protections and enforcement tools, shifts some jurisdictional authority between OSHA and other federal agencies, and imposes new compliance and reporting duties on employers and State plans with defined timelines for implementation.