Articles Posted in OSHA

Ellen Johnston

Dallas Employment Trail Lawyer Ellie Johnston

Every employee deserves a safe workplace. Whether you work in construction, health care, retail, or an office, your employer has a legal duty to provide an environment free from known hazards. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created to enforce these rules and protect employees when companies cut corners. But too often, workers hesitate to speak up because they fear retaliation.

The truth is that retaliation is common—and it’s illegal. Workers who raise safety concerns, request inspections, or file OSHA complaints are protected by federal law. Retaliation can take many forms: sudden termination, reduced hours, demotion, harassment, or even blacklisting that makes it harder to find work in the future. These actions are meant to intimidate, but OSHA’s whistleblower provisions exist precisely to stop employers from silencing their workers.

Summary: This article explores some of the nuances of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act’s anti-retaliation provisions, and how they can help you as a transportation employee. 

The federal Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act provides protections for employees who blow the whistle on safety problems on the job.  However, those protections do not cover every safety concern or industry, and employees have an extremely short, 30-day window in which to file a retaliation claim with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).    

Fortunately, OSHA also enforces various other more specific whistleblower laws.  One important example is the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982.  Among other things, that law provided broader protections for a narrower set of people: workers who drive commercial vehicles (including contractors), mechanics on commercial vehicles or employees who otherwise directly affect the safety of those vehicles, and employees who handle freight. 

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