Hochul Weighs Warehouse Safety Bill as Injuries Continue to Climb

New York’s warehouse workers face higher injury rates than employees in any other sector.

In recent years, they’ve been hurt more often and more severely than before, according to new federal data. And they reported more than one injury per nine workers in 2023 — more than double the rate of warehouse workers nationally.

As e-commerce has driven rapid growth in the industry — which added tens of thousands of jobs around the state in recent years — labor advocates are pressing Governor Kathy Hochul to sign a bill that would require warehouses to develop plans to keep workers safe. The legislation was delivered to Hochul on Thursday, and she has 10 days to sign or veto it (or allow it to become law without signing it).

Nearly half of warehouse injuries nationwide are classified as “musculoskeletal” — such as sprains and aches resulting from repetitive motions or other ergonomic hazards.

The Warehouse Worker Injury Reduction Act would require warehouses to develop programs to mitigate those hazards. Under the bill, state-certified ergonomists, who focus on making workstations more comfortable and safe, would consult on the programs and perform annual workplace evaluations.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is generally in charge of regulating workplace safety and can penalize employers for failing to provide a safe work environment. But the agency does not have a specific rule for ergonomics, which means it must jump through extra hoops to penalize warehouses for those hazards. (The agency issued an ergonomic standard in 2000, but it was overturned by a Republican Congress.)

In its memo of opposition to the bill, the Business Council argued that OSHA already requires companies to keep their warehouses safe and that the New York bill would duplicate federal enforcement efforts.

A September report from the federal Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog agency, found that while ergonomic hazards are a primary cause of musculoskeletal injuries, OSHA rarely cites warehouses for them. Between 2018 and 2023, the agency issued more than 2,500 citations to warehouses, but only 11 of those citations were for ergonomic hazards.

Absent an ergonomic standard, the penalties for such hazards “require a high level of evidence that can make issuing them a challenge,” according to the report.

In 2023, OSHA announced it would devote more resources to warehouse enforcement. But “I don’t think that there’s any indication that they’re planning to develop a new standard,” said Thomas Costa, director of education, workforce, and income security issues for the GAO and author of the September report. In 2012, his office found that it takes OSHA more than seven years, on average, to develop new standards. Meanwhile, incoming President Donald Trump is reportedly considering a former Amazon executive to run the workplace safety agency.

Proponents of the bill before Hochul argue that it would enable state labor regulators to step in where federal ones can’t.

“This is exactly why New York State needs its own legislation on this topic, with state Department of Labor enforcement,” said Irene Tung, senior researcher and policy analyst with the National Employment Law Project. “Federal OSHA basically has its hands tied on the topic of ergonomics and can do very little more than it already has, which is insufficient given the size and urgency of this crisis for warehouse workers.”

The Business Council is asking Hochul to amend the bill through a process called chapter amendments, in which the governor signs a bill on the condition that the legislature passes certain changes to it in the next session.

The governor’s office declined to comment on any specific chapter amendments, but told New York Focus on Thursday that “negotiations are still ongoing.”

The lobbying group claims the original legislation’s measures are unnecessarily onerous and duplicative.

The legislation functionally requires warehouses to “recreate workplace safety plans they already have in place,” said Frank Kerbein, director of the Business Council’s Center for Human Resources, “or change them based on the advice of some third party who doesn’t know the industry as well.”

“We’ve been advocating — if there’s a solution out there to this bill — to amend it to make it look more like the Minnesota law,” said Kerbein, referring to ergonomic hazard legislation that passed in Minnesota in 2023. That law “states goals, as opposed to dictating the method on how to get there,” he said.

The Minnesota law does not require employers to consult outside experts when making their safety plans, nor does it include a timeline for employers to address safety hazards. By contrast, the New York legislation would make the state-certified ergonomists’ assessments binding.