Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. GARCIA of Texas. Madam Chair, I am proud to cosponsor H.R. 1309, introduced by my colleague, Congressman Joe Courtney.

This bill requires the Secretary of Labor to develop a comprehensive workplace safety and health standard. Ultimately, this legislation will protect the millions of workers in the healthcare and social service industries by implementing a violence prevention plan.

Prevention plans and training are critical tools to mitigate dangerous situations if and when violent emergencies occur in the workplace. Clear and effective plans that address violence prevention benefit both the workers and their patients or clients; and violence prevention plans catered to the respective industries, using evidence- based practices, are even more effective.

In the healthcare and social service industries especially, workplace safety reforms are much-needed.

Social workers, like healthcare workers, are particularly vulnerable and susceptible to instances of workplace violence. Workers in both of these professions interact daily with people struggling with mental health, addiction, and/or recovering from trauma.

Madam Chair, let me just tell you, personally, that I have been impacted by this. I am a former social worker. I will tell this quick story.

I went to make a home visit. I was a geriatric social worker at the time. It was in a house, a shutdown house right down Lyons and Jensen.

I believe, Madam Chair, that is in your district now.

I knocked on the door, and to my surprise and shock and fear, a little old lady--she was probably about 85 or 90--comes out with a gun pointing right at my face, pointing right at my face.

That is not what a social worker experts when they are coming to visit a home to make plans for a home healthcare aide, which is what I was doing.

But she thought that I was there to take a child away from her that she had in her home and that I was a child welfare worker, so she was defending her son. Actually, it was a street child.

I had to convince her with every persuasive part of my body that I was not there to take her child, that I was actually there to help her and give her a home health aide to help her in her home. And quite miraculously, I talked her out of it, and I actually got her to put the gun away.

Now, I was lucky, but, regrettably, those things may still be happening out there in America: a social worker facing a gun, a social worker facing violence, a social worker facing harm or injury to herself or others.

So that is what this bill is about. It is not about what the employers will or will not do; it is about the protection of the workers and making sure that the employers do have plans, much like they do for hurricanes, that they have plans for violence.

So all employees, regardless of the line of work, deserve to feel safe and not feel the fear that I did that day and to be protected from violence in their workplaces.

They also deserve to have peace of mind that an informed violence prevention plan is in place. With that in mind, I am proud to offer an amendment to an already excellent bill.

My amendment would ensure that annual evaluations of violence prevention plans include changes based on informed findings by employers. Employers can use their personal experiences or lessons learned to effectively update the violence prevention plan in their mandatory annual plan reviews.

Simply put, the goal of this amendment is to enhance the participation and protection of covered employers and employees in the creation of updating their annual plans. This is a commonsense amendment intended to implement best practices.

Employer input, along with employee input, will create the best violence prevention plans possible. It will also help industries update their prevention plans, as needed, to cater to that specific industry's needs.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. FOXX of North Carolina. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

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Ms. GARCIA of Texas. Madam Chair, I accept the condolences, but, fortunately for me, I was under threat but did not die. Regrettably, that situation may happen again and someone may die, and that is what I just want to underscore is that social workers, healthcare workers, all social service workers are put in danger many times.

This bill and this amendment would simply make sure that we got participation and input from the employers, the employees, and everyone concerned to make sure that we have a good plan and that we use best practices, because, regrettably, not much seems to have changed since the days when I was a social worker.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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