Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about our obligation to protect workers across America and to urge my colleagues to support the Protecting America's Workers Act, which I am very proud to introduce today.

Mr. President, middle-class families across this country are struggling. So many of them have lost their homes or their jobs and are fighting to keep their heads above water. We are working hard here to create jobs and get the economy back on track, but we also owe it to middle-class families to make sure those jobs are safe and healthy.

In 2009 alone there were 4,340 deaths in workplaces across America, and over 3 million more were injured or sickened while on the job. If more than 4,000 Americans were killed in 1 day, it would be on the front page of every newspaper in this country. If an epidemic in this country claimed 4,000 lives, it would lead the nightly news each week. But that is not the way it works with workplace injuries. They happen a few at a time, spread out across the country, in communities such as Anacortes in my home State of Washington, where a fire broke out last year at the Tesoro Refinery and killed seven workers.

These were men and women who were taken too young, with so much life to live and with so many people to live it with; workers who took on tough jobs and worked long hours during difficult economic times to provide for their families. They were people who made tremendous sacrifices and who embodied so much of what is good about their communities and their States. They have been dearly missed.

Washington State investigators looked into that incident and determined that the tragedy could have been and should have been prevented. The problems that led to what happened were known beforehand. They should have been fixed, but they weren't. That is heartbreaking.

Every worker in every industry deserves to be confident that while they are working hard and doing their jobs, their employers are doing everything they can to protect them. That is why I am proud to reintroduce the Protecting America's Workers Act. This legislation is a long overdue update to the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, or the OSH Act.

Since that groundbreaking law was passed over 40 years ago, we know American industry has changed significantly. Businesses and workplaces have become much more complex, and workers are performing 21st-century tasks, but the government is still using a 1970 approach to regulations to protect employees. It doesn't make sense, and it needs to change.

We need to update the way we as a country think about our worker safety regulations, and this law is a very important step in that direction. This is not about adding more regulations, it is about having smarter regulations. It is about having regulations that protect workers and make sense for business.

Mr. President, the Protecting America's Workers Act makes a number of key improvements to the OSH Act, but I want to highlight just a few.

First of all, it increases protections for workers who blow the whistle on unsafe working conditions. Protecting workers who tell the truth is just common sense. In fact, in other modern laws, such as the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 and the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, they do exactly that. But since the OSH Act has not been updated, the vast majority of workers today don't have similar protections.

An important part of my bill would make sure a whistleblower's right to protection from retaliation cannot be waived through collective bargaining agreements, and they have the option to appeal to the Federal courts if they believe they are being mistreated for telling the truth about dangerous practices.

The Protecting America's Workers Act also improves reporting, inspection, and other enforcement of workplace health and safety violations. It expands the rights of the victims and makes sure employers who oversee unsafe workplaces are pushed to quickly improve them to avoid further endangering worker health and safety.

This is a good bill. I am proud to have a number of cosponsors in the Senate, as well as the support of many prominent national groups in our efforts to improve workplace safety.

Nothing can bring back the workers we lost in communities such as Anacortes, but we certainly owe it to them to make sure workers everywhere are truly protected on the job. So I urge my colleagues to support the Protecting America's Workers Act and to keep working with us to make workplaces safer and healthier across America.

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