The state’s workplace safety agency investigated each of those recent incidents, but any findings will likely remain confidential, shielding from the public the circumstances that led to those workers not coming home.

State law, RCW 49.17.260, deems health and safety investigations into serious injuries and deaths on the worksite confidential and automatically exempts them from the public disclosure, limiting access to a small few.

The state Department of Labor & Industries, which performs these investigations, has said the law protects witnesses of serious injuries or fatalities at the workplace from retaliation. More recently, an agency spokesperson said L&I would “be open to reforming some aspects of the law.”

Advocates for government transparency contend that without access to investigative records, the public, and reporters, cannot scrutinize L&I’s investigations or fully understand the causes of workplace deaths or injuries.

“The public isn’t able to oversee how the state government handles these investigations, and I do think that that’s wrong,” said Kathy George, a Seattle-based First Amendment lawyer and member of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, a nonpartisan nonprofit advocating for government transparency.

This story is part of Cascade PBS’s WA Workplace Watch, an investigative project covering worker safety and labor in Washington state.

The law, which passed in 1973 when the state enacted the Industrial Safety and Insurance Health Act, exempts investigative files of serious injuries or deaths from the public record, making them available only to the injured worker or the family of a deceased worker, legal representatives, the worker’s union and the employer. Others have to petition Superior Court to get a copy.

“I do think it is one of the more egregious examples of secrecy that is unnecessary and harmful,” George said. “We’re talking about very serious workplace injuries or even deaths. Those are the situations where you really want the government to step in and do its job.”

L&I’s health and safety investigations help determine if a worker’s death or injury happened because a safety rule was not followed, or because current safety rules are too permissive.

These investigation files tend to include investigator’s notes, drawings, photographs, interviews with witnesses, emails between L&I and witnesses, and worksheets that show how L&I calculated any fines.

When a file is deemed confidential, only the citation — which lists any violations and fine totals along with a brief generic description of what safety rule was broken — is publicly available.

George proposed repealing the exemption in 2021 when she was a member of the Sunshine Committee, a state advisory group tasked with reviewing current public disclosure laws and offering recommendations to the Legislature on repealing or amending them.

The committee took up the law the following year and voted 6-2 to keep the exemption.

State Rep. Larry Springer, D-Kirkland, voted against repealing the exemption.

“I thought it was reasonable that it would be in the best interest of the injured party and the employer, because the employers, while not physically injured, their business may be injured –  that disclosure of those findings serve no particularly good purpose,” said Springer, recalling his vote in an interview with Cascade PBS.

Springer added that media can potentially get the record by going through Superior Court.

“I think it comes into the category, was this a solution looking for a problem?” Springer asked. “If the injured party feels as if LNI has not adequately investigated, they’re going to say so.”

The other two state representatives who also took that vote, Rep. Jennifer Graham, R-Spokane, and Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, agreed with Springer at the time, according to statements by the representatives during committee meetings.

L&I legislative director Tammy Fellin defended the law during discussions with the Sunshine committee in 2021, saying that while it was rarely used, it was one of the last remaining exemptions that apply to safety and health investigations.

“We do believe that it gives employees protection,” Fellin said at the time. “We do think that it’s important to encourage employees to participate in these inspections. And so, therefore, we would request that this is maintained.”

George said she still does not understand this justification, arguing that the biggest threat of retaliation comes from employers and the law already allows them access to the report.

She offered at the time to amend her proposal to allow witnesses to choose to be anonymous in investigations. George said other agencies with investigative authority can sometimes grant such anonymity to witnesses.

L&I spokesman Matt Ross wrote in an email that the agency would not object to some changes to the exemption, but declined to make Fellin available for an interview for this story.

“While we’re open to the Legislature narrowing this exemption from disclosure, we would be concerned with an outright elimination,” Ross wrote. “We think it would still be important for the law to provide guidance about exemptions around graphic photos and some other details, as well as around timing of when reports would be available.”

Other West Coast states and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration do not have the same public record exemptions for health and safety investigations. These files typically become available upon final adjudication of any appeals.

The public record exemption does not apply to L&I workplace investigations into other violations such as wage theft. Those documents may be released in response to a record request.

“It’s really daunting,” George said. “If you want to be on a level footing with the defendant, then you’d better have an attorney. So you better have the resources for that.”

Toby Nixon, who took over leading the Sunshine Committee when George resigned in March 2023, said he sees a legitimate public interest in these investigation reports. Citizens should have the ability to scrutinize L&I’s work to ensure the agency has held businesses accountable for safety failures and is not alternatively discriminating against certain companies.

“We can’t know if that’s happening,” Nixon said. “The only way we would know would be if a whistleblower stepped forward.”

Find tools and resources in Cascade PBS’s Check Your Work guide to search workplace safety records and complaints for businesses in your community.

Recently retired Sen. Karen Kaiser, D-Des Moines, a former journalist and the chair of the Senate’s labor committee for many years, agreed she doesn’t see the need to keep a record confidential after an investigation is over. “That doesn’t make sense to me,” Kaiser told Cascade PBS in an interview.

Joe Kendo, chief of staff of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said a worker’s union – which does have access under law — uses those L&I investigative records to check on safety practices and concerns at those workplaces.

“The union would want to see the investigation, and peek into to see where the breakdown occurred that led to a death — was the company not following safety laws, or where the safety laws are too permissible,” Kendo said in an interview with Cascade PBS.

He also urged restraint if legislators ever revisited the exemption.

“I think it’s of acute public interest,” Kendo said, “but I can imagine there being very good cause for limitations on that, such as the name or medical information of the dead worker.”