Building a Safer Future: Private-Sector Strategies for Emerging Safety Issues

The subcommittee on workforce protections will come to order. I note that a quorum is present. Without objection, the chair is authorized to call a recess at any time. Today's hearing will examine emerging workplace safety risks and the need for collaborative practical policy-making to better prevent serious injuries fatalities in the modern workplace. The workplace has evolved dramatically in recent decades, bringing new risks to employers and employees. Today, businesses must navigate an increasingly complex safety landscape shaped by rapidly changing technology, new worker arrangements such as remote work, and evolving operational demands. At the same time, long-standing safety concerns that once received limited attention are now at the forefront of workplace safety discussions. Yet while the nature of work constantly changes, the regulatory framework governing workplace safety has often struggled to keep pace. Although overall rates of workplace injuries and illnesses have declined, far too many workers and families are impacted by serious injuries and fatalities each year. And while progress has been made, even one workplace injury or fatality is too many. To achieve further improvements, we must look at front-line workers, business owners, researchers, and safety experts who are developing innovative approaches to workplace safety. Safety issues that may not have been a part of the conversation decades ago, are now crucial components of workplace safety programs and advocacy efforts. Vehicle-involved accidents, for example, have become one of the leading causes of workplace fatalities across many industries. Drivers, whether in construction, mining, utilities, delivery services, or sales, face significant risks every day simply doing their jobs and supporting their families. In response, many industry leaders are adopting comprehensive safety management systems that go beyond regulatory requirements. These approaches may include leading indicators, behavioral safety programs, and advanced data analytics to identify serious injury and fatality risks before incidents occur. These efforts demonstrate how innovation and proactive safety practices can create safer workplaces. As we look ahead, one thing is clear. Effective workplace safety policies cannot be developed in isolation. Policy makers, workers, employers, safety professionals, and industry experts must all have a seat at the table. To truly improve safety outcomes, regulators and regulations must include meaningful input. from the all those stakeholders involved. Lasting workplace safety improvements require policies that both protect workers and remain practical adaptable and responsive to evolving risks. Ultimately, the goal must be more than just compliance alone, the goal should be to create a safer workplace through thoughtful and forward-looking policies that reflect the realities of modern work. This subcommittee will always find opportunities to partner with the administration, workers, job creators, and safety experts to achieve this shared mission. With that, I yield to the ranking member for her opening statement.

Thank you, Mister Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for joining us today. All workers deserve to come home at the end of the day healthy, whole, and paid fairly for their labor. Thanks to agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Institute for workers benefit from standards based on sound science that have pushed companies to modernize and improve their workplaces. Today's hearing revolves around how the private sector has implemented certain programs to track and address workplace health and safety through the use of what they call leading indicators. These leading indicators focus on whether an employer is taking proactive measures to prevent injury and illness on the job and identify weak spots where additional action might be needed to prevent worker harm. We all want to prevent workplace injuries before they happen, and leading indicators could potentially help with that. But we must be realistic. Effectively tracking and responding to leading indicators will require a lot of investment and personnel that small businesses are unlikely to have. Additionally, some leading indicators, when used improperly, could lead bad employ employers to blame their workers if an injury occurs, instead of taking the proper steps to correct hazard in the first place. The lack we lack sufficient research and information to determine whether leading indicators can meaningf can meaningfully improve workplace safety. Much of the research has been limited to private con consultants, putting it out of reach for smaller employers. While I've I am relieved that the National Safety Council has attempted to fill the gap with useful case studies, we still need comprehensive, open-resourced scientific research to evaluate these indicators. And this kind of public re- research would best be conducted by a well-funded and well-staffed NIOSH. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has made sweeping cuts to NIOSH's staffing. While those cuts have been reversed, there's still significant concern that NIOSH has lost many valu valuable experts. Detonation, we do not know whether the agency is being allowed to replace them. This is yet another example of how the Trump administration's recklessness has come at the direct expense of protecting and prioritizing working Americans. OSHA and NIOSH are our best long-standing tools to stop workplace harm. It is vital that we fully fund and staff these agencies to identify and correct and save working conditions because voluntary compliance programs or leading indicators alone will not be enough. Finally, Mister Chairman, I am grateful that we have made emerging safety and health issues an additional theme for this hearing. As we look ahead to the transition from spring to summer, I worry that the Trump administration's weakened OSHA enforcement programs on heat stress will leave workers vulnerable and in turn the workers who are able to seek medical care for heat stress will be entrusted to our nation's hard-working health c- health care workers who will face serious risks of workplace violation violence another danger that Trump administration has chosen to ignore. Our na- nations Minors also deserve the same protection from a deadly silica dust that other workers enjoy. This is why the Biden administration published an ambitious standard, but the Trump administration has refused to enforce it, instead seems ready to weaken the rule. And this is now happening at a time when siliceous is re-emerging as a health crisis, particularly for workers who manufacture or install artificial stone counter tops. And yet congressional Republicans are actively trying to pass legislation shutting down those workers' ability to hold irresponsible companies accountable in court. These are sick workers and their families who are just trying to get compensation for lung transplant tran cancer treatment and funeral expenses. Every worker deserves to come home safe, and it should be one of the most basic obligations that we owe to all of our constituents. But this Congress and this administration are failing to meet that. Thank you and I yield back.

Pursuant to Committee Rule eight C, all members who wish to insert written statements into the record may do so by submitting them to the committee electronically in Microsoft Word format by five PM, fourteen days after this hearing. And without objection, the hearing record will remain open for fourteen days to allow such statements and other extraneous material noted during the hearing to be submitted for the official hearing record. Now we'll go to the introduction of witnesses. Our first witness is Ms. Lorraine Martin, CEO of the National Safety Council in Itasca, Illinois. All right? I got a confirmation that that was pronounced correctly. Our second witness is Ms. Melissa Peters, shareholder of Ogletree Deacons in San Francisco, California. Our third witness is Mr. Douglas Parker, senior research fellow at the Harvard Law School Center for Labor and a Just Economy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And our final witness is Mister Pat Chagreau. Uh, he is the Senior Director of Health, Safety, and Environmental at the at Chinbro uh corporation in Pittsfield, Maine. And he is testifying on behalf of the associated builders and contractors. Wanna thank all of the witnesses for being here today, and we look forward to each of your testimonies. Pursuant to committee rules, I will ask that each of you limit your oral testimony to a three minute summary of the written testimony of which you have provided. And as committee members may have questions for you, the clock will count down from three minutes, but pursuant to committee rule eight D, the committee practice, however, will be not to cut off your testimony until you reach the five minute mark. I would also like to remind the witnesses to be aware of their responsibility to provide accurate information to the subcommittee. And with that, I will recognize our first witness today. Ms. Martin, you are recognized for your testimony.

Thank you, chairs McKinsey, Wahlberg, ranking members Omar and Scott, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me to testify here today on behalf of the National Safety Council. NSC is America's leading non-profit safety advocate and has been for more than a century. The council's mis- mission is to eliminate the leading causes of preventable injury and death in our workplaces and on our roads. With more than thirteen thousand members representing small and big businesses, labor organizations and public agencies across fourteen uh forty-one thousand um U. S. work sites. Each year more than four thousand people lose their lives to preventable, on the job incidents and millions more are injured. Those numbers have remained largely unchanged for the past decade, leaving millions of families and communities forever changed. The National Safety Council believes we can break this stagnation. Today, I'd like to share with you three emerging safety issues that NSC is currently focused on. Serious injury and fatality prevention, including the use of leading indicators, worker well-being, and roadway safety. Let me begin with serious injury and fatality prevention, or SIF prevention. For decades, safety performance has been measured by tracking what has already happened. These are known as lagging indicators, and for the past decade they have steadily fallen. At the same time, serious injuries and fatalities have remained flat. When we track when what we track prevent people from dying or getting hurt, we need to start measuring safety differently. Today, a strong safety program should focus on reducing risk by identifying hazards and implementing controls before an injury or death occurs. This is accomplished by measuring what we call leading indicators, such as risk assessments, remediation, and employee engagement. The recently updated ASTM standard E two nine twenty dash twenty six, drafted by NSC and its partners provides a strong framework for private entities to adopt leading indicators as their private or their their primary safety measure. The second topic I'd like to discuss is worker well-being. Employee safety can be impacted by external factors, including mental health, stress, fatigue, and substance use disorder. I'm pleased that the newly released twenty twenty-six Office of the National Drug Control Policy Strategy prioritizes expanding recovery-friendly workplaces for over fourteen million workers who currently are in recovery and the nearly thirty million employees with a substance use disorder. Drug overdoses represent eight percent of all workplace fatalities, largely driven today by opioids. In twenty twenty four, emergency medical services were activated over twelve thousand times to respond to a potential workplace overdose. To address this crisis, every workplace should have naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal medication on-site, and train employees to recognize and respond to an overdose. Before I close, I want to address the top cause of workplace death, our roadways. Roadway incidents account for the highest share of work-related fatalities, and have so for nearly half a century. Just last month, two Maryland highway workers were killed in a work zone crash. Toe operators, utility workers, and those who drive for work are all at risk. To address this tragic trend, NSC advocates for greater collaboration between the U. S. Department of Transportation and the U. S. Department of Labor to manage driving risks just as we do any other occupational hazard. Driver training and in-vehicle technologies, including fleet telematics, are vital tools to workplaces to ensure that employees are safe behind the wheel. Using telematics, Home Depot's equipment services division saw twenty-nine percent drop in preventable incidents cutting their total auto liability claims in half. Eliminating preventable deaths and injuries is within our reach, but only if we leverage emerging best practices and technologies. In closing, the National Safety Council applauds the subcommittee for holding today's hearing on these issues and the solutions that will really define the future of workplace safety I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. I'll now recognize Ms. Peters for your testimony.

Chairman McKenzie and Wahlberg, ranking members Omar and Scott, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on this important issue. My name is Melissa Peters, and I am a workplace safety attorney with Ogletree Deakins in San Francisco. Before entering private practice, I served for more than six years as a staff attorney with Cal OSHA, prosecuting workplace safety violations across many industries. Today, I represent employers ranging from hospitals and universities, to manufacturers and agricultural producers. Having worked on both sides of the system, I have seen workplace safety regulations succeed, and I have seen them fall short. My experience has taught me that lasting safety improvements come not from enforcement alone but from clear standards, meaningful stakeholder engagement, and the flexibility to adapt to changing technology and workplace realities. This issue is also personal to me. My great-grandfather, an immigrant to this country, died in a mine collapse in nineteen forty five. My father told me that his own mother never recovered. Preparing for this hearing reminded me that workplace safety is not an abstract policy debate. It affects workers and families for generations. Today, I would likely like to briefly address two issues from my written testimony. First, our regulatory framework is struggling to keep pace technological innovation. A clear example is OSHA's lock-out tag-out standard governing hazardous energy control during equipment maintenance. That standard was written in nineteen eighty-nine, before the creation of advanced engineering controls that can, in some circumstances, protect workers more effectively than procedures built entirely around manual lock placement. Yet, employers are still operating under a framework designed for the technology of the late eighties. In practice, this can discourage investment in safer technology and encourages shortcuts by employees performing frequent make maintenance tasks. Importantly, I am not advocating for eliminating traditional lockout tagout protections. As I explained in my written testimony, I believe OSHA should a should adopt an additive approach that allows validated risk assessed engineering controls where they provide equal, or greater, worker protection. Second, I want to address the unintended consequences that can arise when highly prospris- prescriptive standards are applied across industries facing very different risks. In California, for example, the state adopted a broad workplace violence prevention law modeled largely on health care regulations originally designed for hospitals and behavioral health settings. But works in a but what works in a hospital emergency department does not necessarily translate effectively to a retail business, office environment, or construction site. In practice, many employers end up focused on paperwork compliance rather than building meaningful site-specific safety programs and strong safety cultures. Ultimately, my recommendation is that OSHA and policymakers place greater emphasis on performance-based standards where appropriate, standards that define the safety outcome while allowing employers flexibility in how to achieve it. Prescriptive standards absolutely have an important place. particularly where hazards and controls are well understood. But where technology is rapidly evolving or workplaces differ dramatically from one another, flexibility can produce better and safer results. American workplaces have changed dramatically since Congress enacted the Osh Act in nineteen seventy. And if safety is our goal, our regulatory approach must evolve with them. Chairman, ranking members, and members of the subcommittee, thank you again for the opportunity to testify today. I appreciate your time and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. Next I'll recognize Mister Parker for your testimony.

Thank you, Chairman McKenzie, Chairman Wahlberg, Ranking Members Omar and Scott, uh and members of the subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to highlight several emerging issues that are essential to ensuring workers can go home safe and healthy at the end of the day. I work as a consultant on health and safety issues, and I am also a senior research fellow at Harvard Law School's Center for Labor and a Just Economy. But I've spent much of the last sixteen years in public service, leading OSHA, leading CalOSHA, and holding senior positions at the Mind, Safety and Health Administration. And that is the perspective that I bring to this hearing. The most significant emerging issue that is damaging both worker safety and health and the capacity of private sector solutions is the administration's sustained effort to degrade our system of occupational health and safety enforcement standard setting, research, compliance assistance, training and education, and support for private-public partnership. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of nineteen seventy and the nineteen seventy-seven Mine Act create a shared system of responsibility among employers, workers, labor organizations and government. Despite flaws and weaknesses, that system has resulted in huge improvements for worker safety over the last fifty-five years, and that ecosystem is now under strain. In twenty twenty-five, the administration functionally eliminated the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the nation's principal means of researching and understanding the nature of health and safety hazards, despite congressional authorization and funding. Although that decision was reversed, The President's FY twenty twenty-seven proposed budget again seeks to eliminate the agency with a seventy-five percent cut that would eliminate all occupational safety and health research and transfer other functions within HHS. NIOSH research is the foundation for many of the employer advances you may hear about today. Its work is essential to identifying and understanding emerging hazards, validating safety practices like the use of leading indicators, or lock-out tag-out technology. and developing new technology like continuous dust monitors that protect coal miners' lungs. OSHA's staffing is also at historic lows, with well below seven hundred federal compliance officers. Combined state and federal inspection programs have about sixteen hundred fifty compliance officers, which is smaller than the police force of Charlotte, North Carolina, but is responsible for health and safety enforcement for the entire nation. And yet the administration proposes further cuts to reduce OSHA's staffing by more than a hundred FTE, and reduce the number of workplace safety inspections by thirty-six percent. These actions will result in more - more worker deaths and remove the guardrails that help keep negligent employers from undercutting employers that want to do the right thing and invest in safety. While there are a number of specific emerging hazards that are worthy of discussion, including heat, workplace violence, uh and uh the challenges of AI, the one I wish to bring to the committee's attention is the danger associated with exposure to respirable silica. Engineered stone countertop fabrication is exposing workers to silica at shocking levels and creating a new generation of workers with severe, often fatal, lung diseases by the time they are in their thirties. Without decisive action, this hazard will be America's next black lung. The industry economic models tries to shift safety responsibility and corporate liability from big manufacturers to small, dispersed cutting shops that lack the capital or economic power to implement, the types of controls that would actually be needed to protect workers. This supply chain model pushes the greatest risk onto the most vulnerable workers, largely immigrant population working in these shops. And in mining, increased silica exposure, exposure resulting from current mining practices, is driving a resurgence of black lung among younger Appalachian coal miners. MSHA has a strong rule, but it's on pause by the administration while coal miners wait. An emerging positive development is the growing recognition of the need for employers to adopt safety and health management systems on top of compliance efforts. Good, SHIMs treat safety as a core value based on management leadership, a systematic approach to finding and fixing hazards, and active involvement by workers. At OSHA I encouraged this shift and expanded our own SHIMs model to address mental health issues. As part of these systems, I strongly support the development of leading indicators to pr- pr- improve safety. However, they are not a silver bullet for measuring or predicting While it is important to recognize that traditional injury data can be misused or over relied on by some employers as a management tool just as they might misinterpret or over rely quarterly financial statements or sales report tracking injuries remains a critical foundational component of health and safety and if you don't track uh outcomes you can't reach desired outcomes thank you very much uh I look forward to the discussion.

Thank you lastly I'll recognize Mister Shageru for your testimony.

Chairman McKenzie, Ranking Member Ohmeier and members of the subcommittee on workforce protections, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on building a safer f- a safer future. Private sector strategies and emerging safety issues. My name is Patrick Chigroux. I serve as the senior corporate director of health, safety and environmental at Chimbrow Corp., a one hundred percent employee owned general contractor delivering complex c- construction services across the country. At Chimbrow, safety is not just a program, it's a core value. It's a daily responsibility. a shared commitment across the organization. Recently, Chimborrho was recognized by the associated builders and contractors with its excellence in construction safety pinnacle award, one of only three general contractors in the country to receive this prestigious honor. On May fourth, associated builders and contractors released its twenty twenty six health and safety performance report and demonstra- that demonstrates how private sector safety systems including the use of leading indicators, are already helping contractors identify hazards, reduce risks and improve outcomes before incidents occur. Top-performing ABC members participating in ABC's step health and safety management systems achieve incident rates six hundred and eighty-six percent safer than the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Statistics Construction Industry average, reducing total recordable incident rates by eighty-five percent. The lesson is clear. Proactive measurable safety systems work. At Jimbo we know that safety challenges cannot be solved by looking only at what went wrong after an injury occurred. It requires committed engaged leadership, clear communication, team member involvement, and a culture of trust. In addition, it requires proactive approach, fo- focus on the holistic person, which is why we we utilize leading indicators to help us prevent illness and injuries. At Chimbro, those indicators include daily stretching, communications and fit for duty evaluations, reporting good catches and near misses, identifying high energy hazards and controls, conducting safety walks and audits, peer-to-peer observations, craft-led safety and health committees, daily pre-task planning, new hire and site-specific orientations, and last-minute risk assessments. Today in in the construction industry there are multiple layers of accountability when injuries occur on a project. Well, those include OSHA, workers' compensation, civil risks, contractual or owner accountabilities, and insurance companies. Just as powerful are consequences for damaged client relationships, workforce morale, public perceptions and reduced ability to attract talent. Enforcement alone cannot build an industry-leading safety and health culture. To address emerging challenges, OSHA should also emphasize compliance assistance, cooperative programs, education and practical tools to help employers prevent incidents before they happen. Relying on total recordable incident injury rates as a primary safety metric is increasingly ineffective and counter-productive. Leading indicators measure the inputs and processes that prevent injuries before they occur, and directly uh assess how well safety systems are functioning in real time. OSHA policies should reward prevention, encourage innovation, and help more employers adopt proven practice - proven best practices. People are at the heart and soul of the construction industry. The purpose of any safety program should be to protect them using leading indicators so we can build a safer future for every worker on every project site. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. Under committee rule nine, we will now ask

Thank you, Mister Chairman, and thanks for holding this uh hearing um that deals with reality in the workplace and uh issues we all have to address regardless of party or preference. So thank you. And thanks to the panel for being here. Um Miss Martin, uh you mentioned a report in your written testimony which found this uh substantial readiness gap in using artificial intelligence, uh which we've had several hearings on recently, relative to the workplace, and using digital tools as part of workplace environmental health and safety systems. What are the barriers to using this technology to augment uh workplace safety initiatives?

Yeah, thank you for that question. We did just recently do a study um of over a thousand companies on their readiness to adopt AI. And AI has a significant amount of promise and um also a caution for us to make sure that we do this well. Um it has great uh promise and practicality for helping us identify hazards, as we've been talking about this morning, um and then even recommending how to control those hazards. Um one of the things that are is really important is to make sure uh that there's always human judgment in there and that the employees are part of this process. uh, at each step of the way, any time we adopt new technology, there is often a challenge of making sure it's accepted, uh, that the employees understand how it's helping them, how it's making their job safer. Um, and so having employees at every step of that process is one of the most important things to do to ensure that you can get through some of those barriers.

Well, with that in mind, how does, uh, the current regulatory structure discourage employers, uh, from investing in advanced, uh, uh, safety technologies like AI?

Yeah, we've heard about it here today. There's, there is a uh hazardous control policy that uh OSHA has right now for making sure that equipment that has energy in it is controlled when a human is near it. Uh much of the equipment that's available today in the marketplace and is in our manufacturing facilities has electronic controls, which we just heard about. Um and we call those uh this whole process of ensuring

Mm.

the energy doesn't hurt a human lockout tagout. Uh right now that reg is from the nineteen eighties as Mr. Miss Peters just said, um and it doesn't accommodate some of the technology that we do know, if you use it with more manual procedures can keep us safer. A lot of companies will avoid uh perhaps using that technology cuz it feels as if it is in conflict with the current policy uh that is in record. That policy needs to be modernized um and any efforts that we can have uh to ensure all voices are at the table as we do that will be very appreciated. I would say that's one of the the most important things that we can do to make sure that high-end safety technology gets into some of our high consequence uh workplaces.

Okay, thank you. Um, moving on on that train of thought, Miss Peters, your written testimony um talks about uh California's workplace violence law as a cautionary tale for well I guess basically one size fits all doesn't necessarily fit all. Um, what problems can arise when lawmakers take that kind kind of one size fits all policy?

Thank you for that question, Chairman Wahlberg. The issue is that regulations need to reflect the actual workplace hazards that exist in a particular environment. In the example of California's general industry workplace violence law, the problem is that it was created to address the hazards that exist in behavioral health settings in hospitals. I'm not saying that workplace violence is not a serious problem. What I am saying is that workplace violence, when it presents itself as a hazard across different industries and different workplaces require different responses. When there's a prescriptive law that is imposed across economy, across industries, employers scramble to comply with the requirements, but they're not thinking about what they need to do to tailor their hazard protection and prot- protocols and controls to their own specific hazards in their workplace. So I think um yeah, the regulations need to reflect the actual workplace hazards, that's the problem that was presented with the California law.

Kind of common sense, as we think about it. Thank you. Um, Mister Chagrou, could you provide examples of cooperative programs and educational initiatives that have successfully improved workplace safety outcomes without uh relying on enforcement actions alone.

Yes, thank you. Uh, thanks for the question, Congressman. Um, we work uh, we are, Chimbro is uh OSHA sharp, BPP and uh one of few companies that's mobile workforce recognized. Uh, we have uh programs that we uh demonstrate to OSHA uh that we have uh team member engagement and involvement in our in our safety process. such as our uh in two thousand twenty four we we we were gonna release new helmets to our team members type two construction helmets in a in a in place of uh the office staff just choosing the helmets we wanted to turn to our team members and ask them to try helmets and uh and and share with us their feedback um if they provide a feedback we uh we introduced helmets to entire our entire company based off feedback from our team members so that's an example of uh engagement from our team that uh really resulted in a change in our company and our culture.

organization, practical real world. Um, I'm my time has expired, so I yield back. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll go to ranking member Omar for her questions.

Thank you. Um, it's good to see you. Uh, welcome back, Mister Parker. Uh, in your testimony you described what you call a degrading of the health and safety ecosystem ecosystem. Um, OSHA now has fewer than seven hundred compliance officers. which is the lowest level uh in the agency's history what does it mean for workers when OSHA cannot inspect workplaces and cannot conduct outreach um and cannot update basic safety rules

Thank you um bringing member Omar, it has significant impact across the efforts of OSHA uh if uh if OSHA cannot respond to um as many OSHA uh worker complaints as it used to because it has to triage uh its staff with limited resources then those uh those hazards that workers are complaining about go unaddressed. OSHA ends up focusing its resources on in doing inspections that are gonna get the most attention like fatalities which appropriately should be enforced, but it limits them in doing the kinds of things that we're here to talk about, which is proactive measures that can reduce injuries in the workplace by addressing hazards before they hurt someone. And so you're really turning it into like a - an injury investigation agency, instead of an agency that is, you know, that is out there trying to proactively prevent injuries.

Yeah.

And the same goes for - for um strains on compliance assistance, which become fewer and more cursory. And of course in the - in the area of regulations, uh, you have a staff half what it used to be and you um you not only can't do new regulations, you can't address the um the things that we've talked about today which I frankly support like modernizing lockout tagout because the staff isn't there.

Yeah. Um it and the the other thing in your testimony

Uh-huh.

that you talked about was the silica dust. Um a new report by the Appalachian Citizens Law Center found that twenty percent of mines where um tested. Silica dust last year exceeded fifty micrograms per cubic meter, uh and twelve of them had more than double of that level. Can can you tell us what um the health con consequences are when you're exposed to that level of silica dust?

Um well um working backwards from death, uh you workers are exposed to this um this fibrous material that scars the lungs and i've heard workers describe this as having like a set of truck tires sitting on their chest because they can't breathe as a result of breathing the silicosis uh this is something that's been exacerbated in mines because of the uh changing in the in in uh you know um coal resources and the the depth of coal seams and so more and more rock is getting mined with more and more modern machinery and and this is the result. The um the rule that's been paused would um would uh require employers to more aggressively monitor uh silicosis uh silica dust in real time and um and take preventive actions and um and its pause is resulting in those exposures happening.

Yeah.

It's it's unfortunate that the rule is passed um and even when some of these um employees uh litigation as as a remedy we have republicans on this very committee who have cosponsored a bill that would strip injured workers um of their right uh to sue. Uh so I I I do hope uh that you know people start to actually think about what it means to be pro-worker and to protect um workers. Miss Peters, I wanted to um just circle back on workplace violence. Um, you said the the regulation, um, is one size fits all, and it is hard for different industries to figure out how to implement. Why would why would that be? Because to me it would just be easier to figure out what kind of violence you your employees might be exposed to um and then figure out how to comply.

Thank you for your question, Ranking Member Omar. You're right, it seems like that would be the case. But having prosecuted a bunch of these cases under what was California's and still is their specific health care workplace violence regulation,

Right.

I have a deep understanding of how those risks and hazards that exist in a hospital environment are very different, and the requirement that the response in different industries needs to be different. For instance, The the hazards that you would see with workplace violence in emergency department, necessarily emergency department needs to have open flow and access so people can come in and out. You can't turn patients away. You're dealing with emotions from patients, from families, um, you have behavioral health issues, you have substance abuse issues. A hospital environment has, for instance, a public announcement system. So I've worked with hospitals when I was litigating this this regulation at CalOSHA against the UC um systems, where they can announce a Code-Silver or Code-Red, whatever they wanna call it, and immediately people can respond. Think about imposing requirements for announcement of incidents in a in a field where farm workers are. It's not gonna work, right? So what those employers, agricultural employers, should be focusing on instead is thinking about how they could safely transport or move their workers that are likely spread out performing their tasks in the event of an incident.

Mm-hmm.

So that's just just one example, but the idea is that we want employers focusing on their industry-specific hazards, because if you implement protections that aren't tailored, you have a false sense of security, and it's not gonna be effective and ultimately end up protecting the workers.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Uh, you'll be.

Thank you. Next I'll turn to myself for a few questions. And the first I'd like to start with Miss Peters is the number and incidence across the board of workplace related injuries and illnesses have been coming down for decades now uh which is a a very positive development. We like to see that. Uh and it's been across different administrations with different approaches to OSHA. Uh, that continual decline i- is continuing to occur, which is, again, a - a positive development. At the same time, the fatality rates have been stubbornly high and stuck in a - a position, uh, for quite a long time. We saw in recent years, uh, the highest rate was actually back in twenty-twenty-two, uh, with five thousand four hundred and eighty-six individuals losing their lives in workplace safety in- uh, incidents. Um, can you tell me, Miss Peters, in your opinion, why you think that fatality rate remains, uh, in the position that it's in and why we're not seeing a decline in fatalities, uh, and also if you have any particular information on on that twenty-twenty-two spike compared to other years.

Thank you, Chairman McKenzie. I appreciate your question. So, certainly, with the the fatality numbers hovering uh around five thousand every year, we need those numbers to come down. But this is all the more reason employers need to be incentivized to innovate and invest in safety technology. This is a perfect example for me of the reason we need to work with stakeholders across the board. They are the ones who understand their industry better than anyone else. And if regulators work with employers, they will be able to understand the issues and hazards that exist at the workplaces, and then work with them to have tailored measures to protect their workers in those industries. We need to allow validated alternatives for compliance and give employers regulatory credit for better systems. I think until these things occur, we're going to likely see a hold in those fatality numbers.

I appreciate your response there. Uh, my next question for you would be, you know, talking about these different standards, if they are outdated, uh, how we can improve them, and also, uh, making sure that they actually result in safer workplaces, less injuries, less fatalities, as opposed to just being paperwork.

Certainly. Uh, thank you for your question. So, while there is value in documenting the efforts that you take as an employer at a workplace, what I see in my practice is when regulators and ocean specters come in with a checklist or template style enforcement, the employer ends up mirroring that, whether or not they want to or whether or not that's the best use of the resources. And I would sit here and say it's not the best use of the resources. Instead of, well, for by way of example, I I have a matter in California where a client with a very robust safety program, a global client, very sophisticated, great safety folks that work there, they invest a lot in their safety programs. They've received citations from Cal OSHA. Um, because it's a matter of semantics. When you look at the outcome and whether their program and their protocols protect their employers, or excuse me, the employees, the answer is yes. However, Kalosha has decided that be- because they don't have the right order of a couple words in there that they have a violation. That is now requiring my client to focus on reworking the paperwork the language of their programs, spending all their time and resources on things of that nature, opposed to being out in the field, talking to their workers and trying to ascertain where the real hazards are, and allocating their resources effectively to actually keep workers safe.

Thank you. My final question will go to Ms. Martin. Uh, in the fiscal year twenty-seven budget, the administration makes reference to the fact that they would like to have OSHA create an AI and data analytics

Yes, and thank you for your question, sir. Um, AI, as I said, does have great promise in helping us to sift through data, to look at past experiences and understand where you might predict your next risk. Um and that's being used across a lot of industries and it can be used in the safety community as well. Um we just need to make sure that as we do that we address potential biases that might be in the data and also make sure that as we're uh progressing with the results of whatever the AI is telling us that we have human judgment, that's part of that as well. Um there are privacy concerns when we come to uh any kind of data, um we know that in across all kinds of businesses today. And that will be no different with the, from the data that we have uh related to safety, whether that's personal data, uh whether that's uh a given employee's uh actions. And we need to make sure that we do that with care, and we do that for the purpose of keeping people safe. Um and we have the right kind of policies in place to do that. E- employee engagement and employee um participation in that process often helps you get from where you start to a good good outcome, and we'd recommend that for any OSHA program uh going forward, and to have everyone at the table. have small small businesses, big businesses, labor unions, um other public agencies um as we go through and understand how we can use AI to ensure that our workplaces are safer.

Thank you. Next uh set of questions will go to Mister Fein from Florida.

Well thank you all for for being here today. I I wanna take a slightly different approach in thinking about workplace safety and obviously we're focused on looking out for workers. Um, but I think looking out for workers is not just physical, it it's mental as well. And I wanna get your take on what I see as a rising problem in this country, which is people who were supposedly working but actually aren't. So, we've had an issue, it's come into the news recently, with with fake companies. Um, there was, there's a chain of apparently leering centers, one in Minnesota, one in Texas, we've now learned, or fake hospices in California where people are getting paid. Theoretically they have employees, um, but - but they're - they're actually not doing anything. And so my question to you is, do you think there might be - and I'll start with Miss Peters. Do you think there might be a role for OSHA to go take a look at the - at the negative mental effects that might exist with an employee who's actually not working and what that might actually do to their - to their - to their mental health because they're in a fake job where they're not actually doing what theoretically they're on the books being paid to do.

Thank you for your question. Um, Representative Fein. I agree that the existence of increasing mental health issues in this country are a problem. And I do think it's an important issue. However, if what it is that you describe and if I am understanding your question, and if I'm not, please correct me, um, the jurisdiction between OSHA is between employers and employees. So if these people are not actually working, OSHA's jurisdiction would not oversee that.

Interesting. That is something we should look at, because I believe that when you engage in fraud, there's obviously the financial consequence of it to, you know, the of Minneapolis who've had to deal with the Quality Learing Center. But I also think you degrade the mental health of the person who's engaged in that. I think it corrodes and it eats at your soul. I think it explains a lot of the problems that we have in our society today. Um, I'm gonna tr- transition back to the - to the more normal questions about OSHA. Um, Miss Peters, your written testimony stated that cumbersome procedures can sometimes lead workers to bypassing safety requirements altogether. you know, we can come up with these requirements like in a on a piece of paper, in a in a in a classroom, in a conference room, but then the guys who actually have to do the work go, ah, this is too much, I'm just gonna do the job the way I wanna do it. Can you explain why practical implementation matters when designing safety regulations?

Certainly, and thank you for your question, Representative Fine. I think the way we have to frame this as to remember that as long as humans are performing work tasks, there is going to be human error and shortcuts. And everyone takes shortcuts, right? The the human brain is hard-wired to take shortcuts. And we know this. That is why when we're dealing with something like an antiquated regulation like lockout tagout that has prescriptive manual requirements and you put it up against a situation where in modern workplaces workers feel pressure to produce, it's normal for them to take a shortcut. Right? That's - that's the idea that makes sense and it's tempting. That is why I think it's very important, simpler is better, when workers are in those time pressure situations. And to the extent we can have protections that think for the worker, because they are dealing with the stress of the modern workplace and pressures with production and time issues and the reason this industry exists and and people like me have a job is because accidents happen is to come up with ways and allow employers to innovate in the case of lockout tagout alternative means. Something like a light curtain is much simpler so for an employee who's who's stressed out, pressured, and decides to skip the lotto proc process, if they do have that inadvertent contact or the machine starts up, they're protected.