State laws

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Oakland, CA — Hospitality workers are praising the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board for unanimously approving a standard designed to protect housekeepers from workplace hazards.

Sacramento, CA – Manufacturers of cleaning products sold in California will be required by law to disclose the existence of certain chemicals in their products, making the state the first in the nation to pass such legislation.

Boston – Massachusetts is closer to extending OSHA protections to an estimated 400,000 public workers after the state’s House on Oct. 25 voted unanimously in favor of a bill (H. 3952) that boosts safety standards for all state and municipal government employees.

Providence, RI – Rhode Island is the latest state to guarantee paid sick leave for workers after Gov. Gina M. Raimondo (D) signed legislation into law on Sept. 28.

New York – The New York City Council, after eight months of bill editing, on Sept. 27 unanimously approved legislation establishing construction safety training requirements and programming.

Augusta, ME – A new law in Maine makes more jobs open to workers as young as 14 and aligns the state’s provisions with federal safety regulations to protect those workers.

Seattle – Seattle voters on Nov. 8 approved a measure intended to make working conditions safer for the roughly 7,500 workers in the city’s hotel industry, including housekeepers, room service servers and other employees.

Sacramento, CA – Regulations intended to protect California’s health care workers from workplace violence have been unanimously approved by the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board.

New York – A paid sick leave law that went into effect in April 2014 in New York City is a “non-event” that has not been misused by workers or proven costly to employers, according to a report from researchers at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Murphy Institute at the City University of New York.

Oklahoma City – Jonnie Yvonne Vasquez occasionally needed to lift shoe boxes as part of her job at a department store in Oklahoma.One day, as she lifted boxes, Vasquez injured her neck and shoulder. Soon after, she filed claims for benefits. But her employer had opted out of traditional workers’ compensation, as it was entitled to do by state law, and denied Vasquez’s claims for treatment.