OSHA penalties haven’t been updated since 1990. The Protecting America’s Workers Act (PAWA) recently introduced in Congress would change that. The measure would increase the penalties available to OSHA and prosecutors in the case of certain infractions and in addition, allow for felony charges for an employer’s repeat and willful violations of OSHA regulations that result in a worker’s death or serious injury. According to OSHA administrator David Michaels, this will serve as a deterrent as many “unscrupulous employers often consider it more cost effective to pay the minimal OSHA penalty and continue to operate an unsafe workplace than to correct the underlying health and safety problem”. The bill would also add federal, state and local public employees to those covered by OSHA. The PAWA would amend the General Duty Clause to include all workers at a work site, not just those of the controlling employer, clarify employer responsibility to provide necessary personal protective equipment, and direct the revision of regulations for site logs for all recordable injuries among all employees at a work site. Whistleblowers who tell government agencies about safety problems in their workplaces would also receive additional protections.