Workers’ fatal accident cases could move out of Cal/OSHA

In California, the first hands on a serious workplace injury file can shape everything that follows. AB 2321, introduced by Assemblymember Liz Ortega, would require the Bureau of Investigations inside the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, better known as Cal/OSHA, to spell out in writing how it decides whether to investigate a case or send it on for prosecution.

The bill also would change who handles the worst accidents. If sufficient funding is appropriated, death and permanent-total-disability cases would no longer sit with the bureau, even though the bureau would keep handling other serious injury cases, requests for prosecution and the kind of reports tied to serious violations and serious exposure. Under current law, the bureau already sends its investigation results to the appropriate prosecuting authority unless it finds legally insufficient evidence of a violation.

A different route for the most serious cases

The practical question behind the bill is not abstract. When a worker is killed or left permanently and totally disabled, the pace and direction of the state’s response can matter to families waiting for answers, injured workers trying to understand what happened, and employers trying to figure out what comes next.

AB 2321 would make the bureau’s triage process more explicit by requiring written policies and procedures for reviewing cases and deciding whether to investigate or refer them. And if the funding language is satisfied, the most severe cases would move out of that bureau and to the prosecuting authority that has jurisdiction, with the division required to notify that authority and provide the information it needs to take over. The bill would also allow the Occupational Safety and Health Fund or the Labor and Workforce Development Fund to support that work if money is appropriated.