Washington, DC—In the wake of the tragic March 23rd British Petroleum (BP) refinery explosion that killed fifteen contract workers and injured more than 100, Congressman Al Green (TX-9) introduced HR 3165, the Equal Protection for All Workers Act.

Green’s legislation would specifically include contract workers in criminal statutes so that any employer that willfully violates OSHA standards unequivocally may be held criminally accountable for their egregious attempts to circumvent necessary safety standards.

“The lives of our workers should be valued equally—a company should not have the opportunity to ignore the real issue of improving overall safety simply by hiring a contract worker rather than an employee to do a dangerous job. It is time to ensure the protection of our contract workers just as we protect all other workers,” Green said.

Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, if an employer willfully violates a provision of the Act and its violation causes death to “any employee,” the employer could be subject to criminal sanctions. This law provides a crucial measure of safety for employees but it does not explicitly include contract workers.

Green added, “Ultimately, this may create an incentive system by which employers hire contract workers to do the most dangerous jobs because they believe there will be fewer repercussions if the contract worker is killed than if an employee is killed.”

BP had been repeatedly fined in conjunction with multiple fatalities and a separate explosion in September 2004. According an AFL-CIO report released in April, an American worker is killed on the job every 96 minutes—between 5,000 and 6,000 people are killed every year. A significant number of these individuals are contract workers. In the refinement industry, up to one-half of the refinery workers are contract employees.

The bill has the support of Representatives Gene Green (TX-29), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18), Major Owens (NY-11) and Henry Waxman (CA-30) as well as the AFL-CIO.