Worksafe Inc

Worksafe is dedicated to promoting and protecting the basic right of all people to a safe and healthy workplace. We aspire to end death on the job by expanding the Occupational Health and Safety (OSH) rights of vulnerable workers.

We engage in campaigns in coalition with worker organizations and activist networks to eliminate toxic chemicals and other hazards from the workplace. We advocate for protective worker health and safety laws and effective remedies for people who are injured on the job or suffer work-related illness, and we watchdog government agencies to ensure they enforce these laws.

In addition to advocacy and policy work, we are a support center for California legal aid organizations whose clients encounter workplace health or safety issues, workplace injuries, or retaliation for reporting unsafe work. We provide legal training, technical assistance, and advocacy support to legal aid programs who serve low-wage and immigrant workers, improving access to justice for workers who are most vulnerable to having their rights violated.

More specifically,
(1) Capacity Building through provision of legal support services to workers and pro-worker organizations to increase capacity to address OSH issues so that when crises such as COVID-19 surfaces, workers are poised to take action and protect themselves from workplace hazards and fatalities.

(2) Coalition Building and Strengthening by mobilizing a state-wide effort to advocate for stronger OSH protections and enforcement such that crises such as COVID-19 do not result in a collapse of worker protections.

(3) Policy Advocacy and Agency Oversight to ensure that workers’ OSH rights are protected and enforced, especially in times of emergencies and disasters such as COVID-19 when state agencies may be pressured to be lax in their enforcement.

Our core program touches more than four hundred people a year through direct technical assistance and legal trainings. Because of the nature of our work - advising lawyers, advancing coalitions, communicating with our 3,000 list subscribers - each of our strategies “touches” is amplified by a factor of two to ten or more, as lawyers represent clients in other cases, coalition partners bring our trainings to their members, etc.
To achieve our goals, we count on a team with decades of experience in OSH rights and a wide web of allies and partner organizations

In the past Worksafe has either co-sponsored or served as a key mobilizer for bills that secure stronger OSH protections for workers including the following:
(2019) AB 647 (Kalra) Safety Data Sheets (co-sponsor) - this bill ensures there is better access to multilingual information for California’s diverse nail and beauty salon workers about the health effects of hazardous chemicals in the products used in nail salons.
(2019) AB 5 (Gonzalez-Fletcher) Codifying Dynamex ABC Test (supporter) - Worksafe joined workers and advocates across the state to help pass AB 5, which codified the landmark Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court decision which layed out a new test, the “ABC” test that employers must engage in before classifying a worker as an “independent contractor.”
(2018) AB 2334 (Thurmond) Employer Reporting Requirements for Occupational Injury and Illness (supporter) - Worksafe joined workers and advocates across the state to ensure that Cal/OSHA has six months to cite an employer after discovering a Log 300 reporting. This bill prevents employers from hiding workplace injuries and illnesses.
2016) SB 1167 (Mendoza)(Indoor Heat) requires the Cal/OSHA Standards Board (OSHSB) to issue a standard to protect indoor workers from the hazards of heat exposure by 2019.
(2016) Workplace Violence Prevention Standard for Health Care Workers OSHSB voted to adopt the Workplace Violence for Health Care Workers at its Oct. 20, 2016 meeting. California is the first in the nation to pass a regulation preventing workplace violence. It will require employers to put in place standards and policies to ensure the safety and security of their employees. This standard will help ensure that healthcare workers have the proper tools and training to recognize and protect themselves from potentially hazardous and dangerous working environments.
(2014) SB 193 (Monning) Chemical Disclosure Bill (supporter) - this bill requires chemical manufacturers to report to the state public health agency which state workplaces use their products, so that the agency can notify workers when serious new or previously unrecognized health hazards are discovered.
(2014)AB 1634 Hazard Abatement (co-sponsor) - this bill requires abatement of OSH hazards by limiting stays of abatement orders to the first time a Cal OSH Appeals Board rules (typically 6-8 months, compared to several years of appeals through the courts), and removing an automatic abatement credit that reduced penalties by 50%.
In 2019, to address Wildfire Smoke that had been sweeping across California to the detriment of workers that were forced to work in extremely hazardous and toxic air, Worksafe mobilized to ensure worker protections. Using a two prong approach, Worksafe both co-sponsored a bill, AB 1124 (Maienschein) Wildfire Smoke Permanent Standard and submitted a Petition for a Temporary Emergency Wildfire Smoke Standard along with our partners, the CA Labor Fed and CA Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.