Centre County elected officials, union leaders call for stronger worker protections in PA

In honor of Workers’ Memorial Day, several local union leaders and elected officials from around Centre County came together Friday to remember those who have died or were injured on the job, and to call for strengthened worker protections.

In recent years, at least five deaths have occurred in Centre County that have been investigated by OSHA. In most of the cases, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued citations, finding the employer partially responsible for the workplace deaths.

“These were not unavoidable tragedies. These were entirely avoidable and OSHA found their employers to have contributed to the circumstances that lead directly to these employees’ deaths,” Connor Lewis, president of the Seven Mountains Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said. “And although OSHA’s fines help hold those employers accountable, no fine will bring those workers back to their families.”

State College Mayor Ezra Nanes said those who perform “essential functions” that enable everyone in the community to live in comfort and safety deserve “the opportunity to work an honorable and dignified day, to be paid a good living wage, and then to go home to their own lives, their families, their pets, their community and enjoy the fruits of their labor.”

“No one should ever have to wonder when they wake up and go to work in the morning, ‘will I come home at the end of that work day?’ So the work of ensuring that our workers are safe falls to each and every one of us to everyone in this community, and most especially those of us in government and in industry,” Nanes said.

Before a prayer for those who died on the job by the Rev. Jes Kast, pastor at Faith United Church of Christ, their names were read out loud:

• C.E. Concrete owner Corey E. Eicher, 43, of Bellefonte, fell to his death from a fifth floor balcony at Beaver Terrace Apartments where he was performing construction repairs in 2018.

• Adam Kanouff, 40, of Curwensville, died of electrocution in 2018 while cutting trees for Townsend Tree Service.

• Anthony Laterzo, 27, of Clearfield County, received a fatal electric shock after an excavator struck an overhead power line while working for Abel Construction Company in 2021.

• Alexander Fries, 19-year-old Centre WISP worker of Weedville was killed by electrocution in Penns Valley in 2022.

• Joshua Farkas, 42, died as a result of blunt force head trauma after a five-story fall from an open window at the Days Inn Penn State demolition site in 2022. He was employed by ISI Demolition Inc. out of White Marsh, Maryland

It would be easy, Lewis said, to remember those who have died, pay their respects and to move on. But to do so would undermine their remembrance.

“Remembrance without action would cheapen our remembrance. … I want to be clear on this point. The working families of our labor council in the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO will not accept inaction,” Lewis said.

He continued: “We will not accept a reality in which two workers working side by side, performing the same work, have unequal protections under the law because OSHA covers one of them, but not the other. We will not accept predatory contractors under bidding responsible companies by slashing bid quotes at their workers expense and we will never accept — not today or tomorrow — a family experiencing the pain of a spouse, a partner, a parent, a sibling or a child, never returning home from work because their employer valued profit more than their lives.”

Jake Schwab Worker Safety Act

One action the several speakers — including Sarah Hammond, legislative director for Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, Representatives Scott Conklin and Paul Takac, and Denelle Korin, executive vice president of the Seven Mountains Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO — talked about was the Jake Schwab Worker Safety Act, House Bill 299.

Federal OSHA standards are not extended to nearly 600,000 public sector workers across the state of Pennsylvania, Hammond said. The bill would extend OSHA protections to public sector workers in Pennsylvania, the bill’s memo states.

“Every day that we go without an action, every year, every decade that we have gone without an action is blood on the hands of the state legislature of Pennsylvania,” Hammond said. The bill recently passed out of committee with bipartisan support and it is expected to be supported in the House with bipartisan support, she said. Still, it will be an “uphill fight” to get it passed through the Senate, she said, encouraging people to call their representatives about the bill.

Conklin and Takac signaled their support of the bill.

“On Monday, we’re going to pass that bill,” said Conklin, who has a long family history of union workers, including himself.

Pennsylvania is one of about two dozen states that doesn’t guarantee OSHA protections for public sector workers, Takac said. Those are people who are working to keep the community safe, he said, and gave examples of police, fire, EMS, public school employees, health care workers and PennDOT employee. The bill, he said, is the “right thing to do (and ) now is the time to do it.”

“Every public worker deserves a safe and healthy workplace. They deserve exactly the same rights and protections as every other worker and so do their family, their friends and their communities,” Takac said.

At the local level, more can be done to protect workers on the job. Korin talked about Responsible Contractor policies that local governments can adopt. The Centre County Commissioners have discussed an ordinance and will have a work session on the topic on Tuesday. Two of the three commissioners, Mark Higgins and Amber Concepcion, were at Friday’s event.

Under state law, county and local governments are obligated to accept the lowest responsible bid, Korin said. But “responsible” isn’t defined.

“Because of this lack of clarity, there is an advantage for unfair contractors that slash bid costs at the expense of workers, workforce development and quality. This inherently rewards contractors for poor work quality and worker treatment. And what’s more is that this ultimately penalizes the good contractors that we have who simply can’t compete,” Korin said. She said she and the labor council will continue to advocate for responsible contractor policies in the region.