Concerning worker safety protections.
HB26-1054, the Colorado Worker Safety Act, would create a new state workplace health and safety framework in Title 8. It requires employers to keep workplaces free from recognized hazards and to maintain workplaces in a manner that provides reasonable and adequate protection to workers’ lives, health, and safety. The bill ties that duty to the federal OSHA general duty clause as interpreted on September 1, 2025, and authorizes the attorney general or the Division of Labor Standards and Statistics to adopt rules establishing workplace safety standards, including replacement standards if federal protections are weakened or repealed.
The bill also creates new enforcement tools. The attorney general, the division, labor organizations, worker organizations, and aggrieved persons could bring civil actions for equitable relief, injunctions, stop-work orders, statutory damages, penalties, and attorney fees. Courts could require employers to reassign workers or pay them for a limited period if work is halted by a safety order. Penalties collected under the bill would be deposited into a new Workplace Health and Safety Fund to support enforcement, education, and rulemaking.
In addition to the new workplace safety part, the bill makes conforming changes to existing labor-law provisions. It updates the attorney general’s enforcement authority, expands the Worker and Employee Protection Unit’s ability to investigate and enforce alleged violations of the new workplace safety part, and makes related technical amendments to retaliation, notice, complaint, relief, and whistleblower provisions in article 14.4 of title 8. The bill expressly states that it does not replace Colorado workers’ compensation law as the mechanism for job-related injuries.
The general sentiment reflected in the bill’s progress is that it was intended as a worker-protection measure, but it did not advance through the full legislative process. The bill was amended on second reading in the House and later lost on Senate third reading with amendments, suggesting it had some support but ultimately not enough consensus to pass. No committee transcript or recorded vote details were provided, so the available history is the main indicator of sentiment.
The main points of contention appear to be the scope of state authority and the breadth of enforcement. The bill gives the attorney general significant rulemaking and enforcement power, allows private and representative civil actions, and creates substantial statutory damages and penalties for repeated or willful violations. It also contemplates state standards that could replace weakened federal OSHA or mine-safety protections, which may have raised concerns about regulatory expansion, litigation exposure for employers, and overlap with existing federal and state workplace safety systems.
The bill would add a new Part 2 to article 14.4 of title 8, creating a standalone Colorado Worker Safety Act and expanding state workplace-safety obligations beyond current law. It would authorize the attorney general and labor agencies to enforce a general duty to maintain safe workplaces, adopt safety rules, and pursue civil penalties, statutory damages, injunctions, and stop-work relief. It would also create the Workplace Health and Safety Fund and direct penalty revenue to enforcement and education activities. Existing statutes governing retaliation, notice, complaint procedures, whistleblower actions, and attorney general authority would be amended to incorporate the new workplace-safety regime and related enforcement powers.
The bill appears to have been framed as a pro-worker safety measure, with a focus on stronger protections, enforcement, and backup state standards if federal protections weaken. At the same time, its failure on Senate third reading indicates that the proposal did not achieve enough support to become law. The absence of recorded committee discussion in the provided materials limits insight into specific arguments, but the legislative outcome suggests the bill was controversial enough that support was not sufficient for final passage.
Likely areas of contention include the bill’s broad enforcement structure, especially the ability of the attorney general, labor organizations, worker organizations, and aggrieved persons to sue employers; the size of potential statutory damages and penalties; and the authority for state rules to replace or exceed federal OSHA or mine-safety standards if federal protections are rolled back. Employers may have viewed the bill as creating significant compliance and litigation risk, while supporters likely saw it as necessary to preserve and strengthen worker safety protections in Colorado. The bill’s interaction with federal law and existing workers’ compensation remedies may also have been debated, though no transcript is available here.