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Floor Speech

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Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, on April 16, 2021, the House passed H.R. 1195, the Workplace Violence Prevention for Healthcare and Social Service Workers Act. That legislation, sponsored by Congressman Joe Courtney, passed the House 254 to 166 with the support of 38 Republicans.

This legislation directs the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue a standard requiring healthcare and social service employers to write and implement a workplace violence prevention plan to protect employees from violent incidents.

In the year since that legislation passed the House, we have been unable to generate the same level of support from our Republican colleagues needed to pass this legislation in the Senate. This is disappointing because the issue of protecting our healthcare and social service workers has never been more important.

Roughly three-quarters of all nonfatal workplace injuries happen to healthcare workers.

While it is too early to have comprehensive data from the pandemic, evidence from healthcare organizations suggests that workplace violence has exploded during the pandemic, nearing crisis levels for healthcare and social service workers. This workplace violence crisis is surely contributing to the staffing shortages that many healthcare employers have warned us about.

In Wisconsin, vacancy rates for healthcare positions have been increasing, and threats against healthcare workers are viewed as the main culprit. These workers care for our loved ones and comfort us in our most trying times. They deserve to have the safe environment in which to do their work that this legislation provides.

1195 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, obviously, I am very disappointed, and I would point out that a voluntary measure, as my colleague on the HELP Committee just described, is not what we need when we step up to help protect our frontline workers in emergency rooms and in multiple settings where there is, sadly, an increasing propensity for violence.

Yesterday, I met with members of the American College of Emergency Physicians, the people who work on the frontlines in our emergency departments and emergency rooms across the country--as well as the emergency nurses. One after another, they shared stories of the violence they see and experience. I can't imagine walking into work every day knowing that this could be the day that someone was going to be struck or injured.

A doctor talked about being strangled with his stethoscope. A nurse talked about hearing a fellow nurse being punched and then falling on the floor, unconscious, and now with a concussion. I met a nurse several years ago from Wisconsin who was beaten so severely by a patient that she can no longer work in nursing.

We are not talking about studying a problem and coming up with a voluntary solution; we are talking about a crisis happening to our healthcare workers and at a time when they are also dealing with a pandemic.

Healthcare workers, social service workers, nurses, and doctors have been here this week. We will have more coming next week. These frontline heroes, who have endured so much, deserve the protection of an enforceable OSHA standard, not just a voluntary program, which is already the status quo.
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Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I suppose I prematurely gave my reasons for objecting as I responded to Senator Braun's objection to passing the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act; but, again, this is pretty much the status quo. If it is a voluntary program, it is not an enforceable OSHA standard; and these frontline heroes who have endured so much over the past few years, with increases in violence and during the pandemic, deserve the legislation that I have sponsored, the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act. The House passed it over a year ago, and that is what we should be taking up.

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