Welcome to The Newsfeed.

I'm Paris Jackson.

It's unclear yet whether a Vancouver, Washington based contractor will face felony charges related to a 2023 incident where a teen worker was severely injured on the job.

The Clark County Sheriff's Office has declined to criminally investigate Rotschy Incorporated this June due to a lack of cooperation from the victim and witnesses.

Meanwhile, the contractor remains under fire after a worker in a separate incident was badly injured also in June on another job site.

Local labor unions have protested the Port of Longview's decision to hire Rotschy due to its safety history, which spans 25 serious violations and $264,000 in fines over the past five years.

I sat down with investigative reporter Lizz Giordano to learn more about the L&I investigations against the contractor.

Vancouver based construction company Rotschy is back in the spotlight after a worker was severely injured in June while in the Vancouver area on the job.

What does Rotschy have to say about that injured worker?

For context, according to the police report, an unsecured excavator bucket fell on a worker who was in a trench working.

A spokesperson for the company called it a horrible accident and unfortunate that it happened, but that incident would have no impact on the work at the Port of Longview.

And they also have told me that pushback from the unions came from the project being awarded to a nonunion company.

Union leaders told me that they advocate for the safety of all workers, and they don't have time to protest every project that goes to a nonunion company.

It was your investigative reporting that brought to the forefront another case involving a student worker who lost both legs while working for Rotschy.

That led to changes with L&I as well as in state law.

Yeah.

The kid's injuries spurred, lawmakers to take action.

And this year, led by Rep Mary Fosse out of Everett with lots of support from labor, passed HB 1644, and it tightened labor laws for minors.

It set minimum penalties for violations.

It prohibits companies with multiple serious safety violations from hiring minors, and it requires inspections of construction sites before certain permits for certain variances are issued.

Now, this company has faced a lot of pushback, even a referral for felony criminal charges in that student worker case.

Yeah, the company has a long history of safety violations.

You know, back in 2023, the kid lost his legs.

There was another minor, not severely injured on a site that spurred an L&I investigation that found the company was overworking minors.

They were cited again in 2023.

And again, they found the company was overworking teens longer hours than state law allowed.

In fact, working one 14 year old more than 40 hours in one week, again not allowed under state law.

-In the case of this most recent worker injured in June.

That project was halted by the Port of Longview, which was a bit unusual.

Port of Longview temporarily halted work on that project right after that worker was injured.

They wanted to take a, they wanted to take a deeper look at the safety plan the company had written for the project, and they ended up spending one meeting about two hours long going page by page, through the safety plan.

And they allowed union officials and, company officials to all kind of talk and discuss kind of what they wanted to see and a plan.

Where does the Port of Longview commission stand in this entire situation?

Yeah, the Port of Longview began talking about hiring a third party safety manager when union officials started pushing back about the, about the company being hired and asking the Port to rebid the project.

And in some case, the Port is stuck with the company, since their bid was the lowest that met all the criteria, according to state law the Port, the Port has to accept it.

At least one Port commissioner I talked with says in the future he wants to see responsible bidder criteria put into bids to ensure that companies with a safety history like Rotschy would not be allowe to be hired for projects, for public projects.

The Clark County Prosecutor's Office is still reviewing the case.

I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching The Newsfeed, your destination for nonprofit Northwest news.

Go to CascadePBS.org for more great local coverage.