Workplace Safety Rights

The West Virginia Legislature is back in session again this year, which means there will be efforts to get rid of workplace safety protections that protect workers from employers who knowingly put them in harm’s way. Since West Virginia turned red, every single legislative session now sees a bill to repeal the provisions of West Virginia Code Section 23-4-2. That law allows workers to sue their employer in civil court for money over and above what one can get from West Virginia’s workers’ compensation program when an employer knowingly risks a worker’s life by making them work in a manner the employer knows is unsafe. Just like he did last year, Delegate John Hott has again introduced House Bill 2402 in the 2023 legislative session that would end this protection for all West Virginia workers.

It would be great if we didn’t need this law because employers simply didn’t knowingly risk their workers’ lives anymore. But, sadly, nothing could be further from the truth, and there are no signs of any slowdown in the types of situations that give rise to a W.Va. Code § 23-4-2 case. Here, I’m referring to situations where an employer makes a worker do an inherently dangerous job without training them to do it, or makes a worker stand under unsupported structures that fall on them and crush them or removes safety guards on machinery that end up costing a worker their arm, or their life. All of these scenarios routinely continue to happen today, and the root cause is always the same – production, production, production, money, money, money. But the protection that West Virginia Code Section 23-4-2 provides is critical to West Virginia’s workers, because when a worker is put in harm’s way like that, terrible, permanent injuries often occur and the money available under worker’s comp is a drop in the bucket of what someone needs. Workers not only must live but try to return to work with a permanently damaged body caused by unsafe working conditions.

Of course, the insurance and certain industries (tree trimming companies are a big one these days) don’t want this kind of protection. It costs them money when employers leverage the inherent power dynamic they have over their workers to cajole those workers into risking their own safety for the good of the company or to avoid “the line of other workers just waiting to take their job if they don’t comply.” But workers can ill afford to lose it in a resource-rich state like West Virginia, where inherently dangerous industries like coal mining, electricity generation, tree cutting, and on and on provide most of the jobs.

So, this year, it’s once again up to the West Virginia worker to fight back against the corporate attempt to seriously knee-cap workplace safety. If you believe in the right to a safe workplace and a job that pays well and allows you to come home to your family at night, contact your local representatives, who are all down in Charleston right now, and urge them to vote NO on any industry efforts to eliminate workplace safety protections.