New
federal requirements take effect August 10, 2016
The
U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health
Administration today issued a final rule to
modernize injury data collection to better inform workers, employers, the
public and OSHA about workplace hazards. With this new rule, OSHA is
applying the insights of behavioral economics to improve workplace safety and
prevent injuries and illnesses.
OSHA
requires many employers to keep a record of injuries and
illnesses to help these employers and their employees identify hazards, fix
problems and prevent additional injuries and illnesses. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics reports more than three million workers suffer a workplace injury or
illness every year. Currently, little or no information about worker injuries
and illnesses at individual employers is made public or available to OSHA. Under
the new rule, employers in high-hazard industries will send OSHA injury and
illness data that the employers are already required to collect, for
posting on the agency’s website.
Just
as public disclosure of their kitchens’ sanitary conditions encourages
restaurant owners to improve food safety, OSHA expects that public disclosure
of work injury data will encourage employers to increase their efforts to
prevent work-related injuries and illnesses.
“Since
high injury rates are a sign of poor management, no employer wants to be seen
publicly as operating a dangerous workplace,” said Assistant Secretary of Labor for
Occupational Safety and Health Dr. David Michaels. “Our new
reporting requirements will ‘nudge’ employers to prevent worker injuries and
illnesses to demonstrate to investors, job seekers, customers and the public
that they operate safe and well-managed facilities. Access to injury data will
also help OSHA better target our compliance assistance and enforcement
resources at establishments where workers are at greatest risk, and enable ‘big
data’ researchers to apply their skills to making workplaces safer.”
The
availability of these data will enable prospective employees to identify
workplaces where their risk of injury is lowest; as a result, employers
competing to hire the best workers will make injury prevention a higher
priority. Access to these data will also enable employers to benchmark their
safety and health performance against industry leaders, to improve their own
safety programs.
To
ensure that the injury data on OSHA logs are accurate and complete, the final
rule also promotes an employee’s right to report injuries and illnesses without
fear of retaliation, and clarifies that an employer must have a reasonable
procedure for reporting work-related injuries that does not discourage
employees from reporting. This aspect of the rule targets employer programs and
policies that, while nominally promoting safety, have the effect of
discouraging workers from reporting injuries and, in turn leading to incomplete
or inaccurate records of workplace hazards.
Using
data collected under the new rule, OSHA will create the largest publicly
available data set on work injuries and illnesses, enabling researchers to
better study injury causation, identify new workplace safety hazards before
they become widespread and evaluate the effectiveness of injury and illness
prevention activities. OSHA will remove all personally identifiable information
associated with the data before it is publicly accessible.
Under
the new rule, all establishments with 250 or more employees in industries
covered by the recordkeeping regulation must electronically submit to OSHA
injury and illness information from OSHA Forms 300, 300A, and 301.
Establishments with 20-249 employees in certain industries must
electronically submit information from OSHA Form 300A only.
The
new requirements take effect Aug. 10, 2016, with phased in data submissions
beginning in 2017. These requirements do not add to or change an employer’s
obligation to complete and retain injury and illness records under the Recording and Reporting
Occupational Injuries and Illnesses regulation.
Under
the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, employers are responsible for
providing safe and healthful workplaces for their employees. OSHA’s role
is to ensure these conditions for America’s working men and women by setting
and enforcing standards, and providing training, education and assistance. For
more information, visit www.osha.gov.
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