Workers presently have no right to bring a lawsuit against employers under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) for failing to provide safe and healthy working conditions. If an employer exposes workers to toxic chemicals or fails to guard a dangerous machine, for example, they must rely on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to inspect, find a violation, and issue a citation. This omission in the 1970 statute is especially troubling in the context of COVID-19, as workers across the United States continue to face a massive workplace health crisis without any meaningful support from OSHA or most of its state and territorial counterparts.
OSHA has so far declined to adopt an emergency standard to address COVID-19, despite repeated calls by unions, workers, and advocates to do so. Moreover, rather than enforcing existing standards or holding employers accountable for violating their general duty to provide safe and healthy working conditions, the agency is sitting on the sidelines, watching the crisis unfold.. OSHA's state and territorial counterparts aren't doing much better – California has an existing standard, and only Virginia and Oregon's occupational safety and health programs have taken action to institute an emergency standard. Elsewhere, workers are at the mercy of OSHA's disinterest.
As the pandemic makes crystal clear, workers need and deserve the right to step up and enforce the law when OSHA is unable or unwilling to do its job. In a new CPR report, CPR Member Scholars Michael Duff, Thomas McGarity, Sidney Shapiro, Rena Steinzor, and I call on Congress to update the OSH Act and provide workers with a private right of action.
By empowering workers to enforce the law on OSHA's behalf (or in its stead, as the case may be), Congress could transform the OSH Act, empowering employees to overcome OSHA's failure to ensure that all workers have healthy and safe workplaces. The idea is premised on citizen suit provisions found in numerous other federal laws, from the Fair Labor Standards Act to the Clean Air Act.
A private right of action is needed now to breathe life into a law that no longer lives up to its mission of protecting workers and to an agency that has long been debilitated and sometimes unsympathetic. The current crisis is emblematic of an agency that is more inclined to ignore workers during a crisis than to step up to the challenge the crisis poses. And the coronavirus is not the only crisis workers face. We need a stronger statute and a committed OSHA to empower workers and officials to collaborate on tackling unaddressed existing hazards and emerging ones, such as toxic chemicals, ergonomics, automation and artificial intelligence, and climate change.
In our report, OSHA's Next 50 Years: Legislating a Private Right of Action to Empower Workers, we offer several recommendations about what is needed to ensure this new private right of action is strong and would actually be utilized by workers. Some of the highlights include:
You can read about these and other recommendations in the report here.
As we explain in the report, engaging workers more meaningfully in the enforcement of health and safety standards will not only improve their immediate conditions but also disrupt the cycle of worker disempowerment that contributes to unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, giving workers a voice to achieve lasting improvements in the workplace.
Help us spread the word about revolutionizing worker health and safety for the next 50 years on Twitter and Facebook.
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Katie Tracy | July 29, 2020
Workers presently have no right to bring a lawsuit against employers under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) for failing to provide safe and healthy working conditions. If an employer exposes workers to toxic chemicals or fails to guard a dangerous machine, for example, they must rely on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to inspect, find a violation, and issue a citation. This omission in the 1970 statute is especially troubling in the context of COVID-19, as workers across the United States continue to face a massive workplace health crisis without any meaningful support from OSHA or most of its state and territorial counterparts. As the pandemic makes crystal clear, workers need and deserve the right to step up and enforce the law when OSHA is unable or unwilling to do its job. In a new CPR report, CPR Member Scholars Michael Duff, Thomas McGarity, Sidney Shapiro, Rena Steinzor, and I call on Congress to update the OSH Act and provide workers with a private right of action.
James Goodwin | July 28, 2020
Today, a group of 136 law professors from across the United States, including 31 Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) Member Scholars, will send a letter to congressional leaders urging them to “ensure that our courthouse doors remain open to all Americans for injuries they suffer from negligence during the COVID-19 pandemic.” The letter, spearheaded by CPR Member Scholars Dan Farber and Michael Duff, comes in response to a push by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other corporate special interests to include a “federal liability shield” in the next COVID relief bill, which is now being negotiated in Congress. This shield would prevent ordinary Americans from holding corporations accountable in the civil courts when their unreasonably dangerous actions cause people to become sick with the virus.
James Goodwin | July 22, 2020
Donald Trump is no stranger to leaving things worse off than he found them, and this is precisely what his administration now aims to do with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), not just one of the most successful government institutions in the history of the United States, but indeed the world. Having worked quickly, if not sloppily, to dismantle every vestige of the Obama administration's efforts to promote cleaner air and water, the Trump EPA is now heading down a path of self-destruction. The agency's proposed "benefits-busting" rule, released early last month, is a big part of this campaign.
Katlyn Schmitt | July 21, 2020
The Maryland Department of the Environment recently issued a general discharge permit that covers pollution from most livestock farms, including concentrated animal feeding operations, across the state through July 2025. Unfortunately, the permit, which went into effect on July 8th, will likely jeopardize the 2025 nitrogen reduction goals under the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load and does not align with Maryland’s Phase III Watershed Implementation Plan commitments.
Alexandra Klass | July 21, 2020
In late June, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison acted in the state's tradition of guarding the public interest when he filed a consumer protection lawsuit against three of the nation’s largest fossil fuel entities — ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute (API). In the lawsuit, he seeks to recover civil penalties and restitution for the harm to Minnesotans caused by these companies’ decades-long efforts to intentionally mislead the public about the relationship between fossil fuels, the climate crisis, and the resulting harm to public health, agriculture, infrastructure, and the environment.
Darya Minovi | July 13, 2020
Nine months ago, residents of the Chicago suburb of Willowbrook, Illinois, scored a major victory in their fight to prevent emissions of a dangerous gas, ethylene oxide, into the air they breathe. In fact, their victory appeared to have ripple effects in other communities. But like so many other aspects of life in the midst of a pandemic, things changed in a hurry.
Michael C. Duff | July 2, 2020
Workers' compensation was created as a means to an end and not an end in itself. It addressed the outrageous frequency of workplace injury and death caused by railroads in the late 19th/early 20th century. The unholy trinity of employers' affirmative tort defenses – assumption of the risk, contributory negligence, and the fellow servant rule – meant that workers or their survivors were not being compensated adequately or, in many cases, not at all. For this reason, expert American investigators were dispatched to Europe between 1909 and 1911 to study the existing workers' compensation systems there. Our current system was the result.
Alice Kaswan | July 1, 2020
When California adopted its first-in-the-nation regulations requiring truck electrification on June 25, the state took a step (or drove a mile) toward reducing pollution in the nation's most vulnerable communities. The new regulation exemplifies a key feature of California's approach: its integration of climate goals, clean air goals, and, at least in this case, environmental justice goals.
Katie Tracy | June 19, 2020
Until this week, laws in a majority of U.S. states permitted some form of employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. On Monday, the law changed – dramatically, sweepingly, historically – when the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that in this respect the 1964 Civil Rights Act's anti-employment discrimination provisions mean exactly what they say. The Court's ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia makes clear that it is illegal to base employment decisions – hiring and firing, the allocation of work, the grouping of employees, compensation practices, harassment – on sexual orientation or identity. The prior patchwork of state laws – most of which permitted some type of employment discrimination based on orientation or identity – is no more.