Legislation further limiting state labor protections passes House

Yahoo

27-02-2025

The Kentucky House of Representatives, Jan. 9. 2025. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)
FRANKFORT — The GOP-controlled Kentucky House of Representatives passed a bill largely on party lines Wednesday further limiting state labor protections to a less-stringent federal standard, a move touted by proponents as business-friendly but lambasted by unions as an 'attack' on workers.
The Kentucky legislature in 2021 passed a law that prevented state labor officials from implementing any new regulations more stringent than the federal standard established by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. House Bill 398, primarily sponsored by Rep. Walker Thomas, R-Hopkinsville, would go further to prevent the Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet from implementing any existing state regulations that exceed federal standards.
On the House floor, Thomas said the legislation was about aligning Kentucky with federal workplace safety standards as the state's economy grows, arguing employers in Kentucky should be able to have consistent standards across multiple states.
'It's important for businesses to not have to go from state to state, and have to address different regulations,' Walker said. 'If a company has three different factories in multiple states, it would be nice if all three of them would all line up.'
Kate Shanks, a senior vice president of public affairs for the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, sat next to Walker when the bill passed the House Economic Development and Workforce Development Committee earlier this month. She described the bill's provisions then as a 'broad-based business issue.'
The House approved HB 398 by a vote of 62-33, with 14 Republicans joining the minority of Democrats in opposing the legislation. Democrats who opposed the bill echoed the concerns of labor unions. Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Dustin Reinstedler previously told lawmakers the bill was a 'direct attack on the protections that have been hard won by generations of workers in Kentucky.'
In a Feb. 19 letter addressed to Walker, Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet Secretary Jamie Link wrote that by not allowing Kentucky to enforce state-specific workplace safety standards, the state's workers would lose guidance and protections in situations including dealing with 'high-voltage electrical lines, bulk hazardous liquid unloading, and employee exposures to hazardous materials protections.'
Among the provisions in HB 398, it could limit who can request a workplace-safety inspection on behalf of an employee. Currently, the definition of who can request such an inspection is broad and could potentially include an employee's family, attorney or another representative. HB 398 would limit who could request an inspection to those who are 'reasonably necessary to conduct an inspection based on their relevant scientific, technical, or specialized knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education.'
The state could also be required under the bill to pay court costs and attorney's fees if a workplace safety ruling by the state was overturned in an appeal in state court. HB 398 also puts tighter deadlines in place for filing complaints of alleged workplace safety violations and the time the state has to potentially issue a citation against an employer.
Jason Bailey, the executive director for the progressive think tank Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, wrote that the 'severe limitations' the bill places on the state-managed workplace safety program in Kentucky would also endanger the state's ability to manage its own program.
Kentucky House Minority Caucus Chair Al Gentry, D-Louisville, told the House from the floor that he lost his dominant right arm as a geologist due to a workplace accident in the 1990s when he was 28 years old. He said the emotional fallout from that accident was why bills such as HB 398 mattered a lot to him.
'House Bill 398 isn't a policy that helps others as much as it could lead to others being harmed,' Gentry said. 'We need to be focused on policies that help Kentuckians, especially our workers, not policies that could jeopardize their health and safety, even if it cuts cost.'
Rep. John Blanton, R-Salyersville, one of a few Republicans in the legislature who received an endorsement by the state AFL-CIO, had a floor amendment to change the bill fail by a razor-thin margin of 47-48. The amendment would have removed the limits on who can request a workplace inspection on behalf of an employee and nixed the requirement that the state pay court costs and attorney's fees if a workplace safety ruling is overturned in state court.
Blanton told lawmakers that the state needed to provide a safe working environment and 'the opportunity for people, when there is a violation, to be able to report that violation of safety issues.' He ultimately voted against the bill.
House Majority Whip Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, who voted for the bill, said he liked some aspects of Blanton's amendment but that removing provisions, including the ability for a business to collect attorney's fees and court costs if a business successfully takes the state to court, went too far. Nemes said there'd be opportunities to improve the bill in the Kentucky Senate.
Other Republicans who supported the legislation pushed back on notions by Democrats that the bill's supporters only wanted to cut costs for industry or had never worked a blue collar job. Rep. Jim Gooch, R-Providence, said on the House floor he did dangerous work as an underground coal miner in the 1970s that gave him perspective on the safety challenges faced by workers.
He said industries in the state deserve to have government regulators who understand how their respective industries operate and are willing to collaborate with industry 'to provide a safer workplace by doing things that are reasonable and that are doable.'
'I'm gonna vote in favor, and certainly my vote is not because I want to immediately reduce cost on some business out there, (it) certainly is not because I want to lower safety regulations for our workers because I have been those workers before,' Gooch said.