GOP lawmakers pass bills to weaken KY worker safety standards at request of employers
Two bills that would roll back worker safety protections in Kentucky passed swiftly through the Republican-led General Assembly in recent days.
The House and Senate on Wednesday sent to Gov. Andy Beshear House Bill 196, which would reduce from two to one the number of mine emergency technicians, or METs, who must be present at coal mines when there are 10 or fewer miners working.
A mine emergency technician is a miner who is trained and certified to provide basic medical care.
Supporters of the bill said weakening the law will financially help coal companies that can’t always find two trained METs for every shift.
Opponents said the change will put miners at risk. They cited the 2005 death of David “Bud” Morris, who suffered inadequate medical care from the sole MET on duty at his Harlan County mine after he was struck from behind by a loaded coal hauler.
Kentucky lawmakers, including some with personal ties to the coal industry, have been trying to weaken the requirement for two METs in smaller coal mines since shortly after they first enacted the law in 2007, partly in response to Morris’ death.
On another worker safety measure, House Bill 398, the Senate Licensing and Occupations Committee approved substitute language to the bill on Thursday and sent it on to the Senate. Senators quickly approved it and sent it back to the House, which accepted the Senate’s changes and gave the bill final passage.
Sought by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, HB 398 would shrink the regulatory authority of the Kentucky Department of Workplace Standards, which monitors most private employers, so it mirrors the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The bill specifies that Kentucky can’t adopt new workplace safety rules that are stricter than federal law, and its state officials can’t enforce any existing state standards “more stringent than the corresponding federal provision” enforced by OSHA.
Also, the bill establishes a “de minimis violation,” or a violation that “has no direct or immediate relationship to safety or health.” The department must issue a citation for de minimis violations within six months of an incident. Those citations won’t carry a civil monetary penalty or be considered a repeat violation.
And the bill allows businesses that successfully appeal a workplace safety or health citation to Franklin Circuit Court to request a financial award from the department for their expenses, including legal fees and court costs.
In a letter to lawmakers Thursday, Kentucky Education and Labor Secretary Jamie Link said he was denied a chance to testify to the Senate committee the previous day and express his “grave concerns” about it.
Among those concerns, Link said, Kentucky workers would lose protections in areas such as high-voltage electric lines, bulk-hazardous liquid unloading and employee exposures to hazardous materials, all of them protections not covered by federal regulations.
In another example, the secretary said, Kentucky worker safety regulations require fall protection at heights of 10 feet and greater, while OSHA regulations start at 30 feet.
“This means Kentucky OSH would no longer have jurisdiction over a fall up to 29 feet, without regard to the severity of the worker’s injury and impact on that worker’s family,” Link wrote to lawmakers.
Testifying to the Senate committee on Thursday, the sponsor of HB 398, state Rep. Walker Thomas, R-Hopkinsville, said he is trying to build “a business-friendly climate.” There are large companies with operations in multiple states that want to operate under one uniform set of rules, not state-by-state rules, Thomas said.
“This bill just shows our commitment to the business community while not jeopardizing the safety of our great employees,” Thomas told the committee.
However, several committee members raised concerns about Kentucky surrendering to the federal government its sovereign right to decide its own workplace safety standards.
State Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, D-Louisville, asked what would happen if Kentucky ties its standards to those of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and then either Republican President Donald Trump or Congress abolishes OSHA.
There is a GOP-led push in the current Congress to close OSHA in Washington, where many federal agencies are currently being slashed by the Trump administration.
“It’s obviously difficult to answer a theoretical question,” replied Charles Aull, a senior policy analyst for the Chamber of Commerce, who was testifying for the bill alongside its sponsor.
“This is something that would affect, presumably, all 50 states,” Aull said. “We currently do have a lot of regulations already on the books. And so essentially those regulations presumably would apply at that point.”
This story was originally published March 14, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
