Pa. Public Worker Safety Bill Advances

The Pennsylvania House has passed a bill aimed at improving workplace safety standards for public employees honoring a former Erie who died on the job.
Public employers in Pennsylvania are not held to the same safety standards as private companies with public sector workers only protected by federal laws.
HB 308, also known as the Jake Schwab Worker Safety Bill, would extend OSHA protections to public sector workers.
A mechanic with Erie Metropolitan Transit Authority Schwab died in 2014 when a suspension air bag in a bus he was working on exploded in his face.
The bill would also allow the state secretary of Labor and Industry to enforce those standards and create a Pennsylvania Occupational Safety and Health Review Board to oversee compliance.
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Washington State’s Department of Labor & Industries has moved to block a company with past labor and safety violations from receiving a special permit that allows minors to perform some dangerous tasks.
The agency allows business that hire students through a work-based learning program to apply for a “student learner variance,” which permits employers to assign minors some job responsibilities.
L&I issues about a dozen student learner variances to companies each year.
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In their outlook on the Trump administration’s OSHA approach, lawyers at Goldberg Segalla are advising that employers should prepare for a shift toward voluntary compliance but remain vigilant about state-specific obligations.
In a blog post, the attorneys said a second Trump term likely means “a lighter federal OSHA presence — fewer rules, softer enforcement, and potential reversals of recent policies — while state and industry self-regulation may fill the gaps.”
Among their expectations, they said that states will likely maintain or strengthen rules like heat safety standards, creating a patchwork of regulations.
“This means employers in these states won’t see relief from safety requirements despite federal rollbacks,” they said.
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Organizations that respond swiftly to immediate dangers and risks, often find themselves unprepared for less obvious but equally dangerous threats, according to recent Harvard Business Review research.
While clear threats prompt decisive action, more ambiguous ones, subtle, inconsistent, and without precedent, rarely trigger the same urgency.
Employees may downplay early warning signs or assume leadership will respond, leading to delayed action and costly outcomes.
A survey of more than 1,100 employees across multiple sectors shows a trend that as threats become less recognizable employees are significantly less likely to speak up.
To reduce the risk of ambiguous threats going unreported, businesses need to encourage a culture of continuous alertness and open communication, the report found.
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