On July 30, OSHA opened an rulemaking intended to rescind Obama-Era electronic injury reporting requirements.
At the same time, the agency announced it will not enforce this year’s July 1 deadline for filing 2017 data said the filing date for this year’s data will be March 2, 2019.
In 2016, nearing the end of the Obama’s second term, OSHA issued the final electronic reporting rule. which would have seen the data made public on the Web.
Then OSHA Chief David Michaels believed that publicly “shaming” companies by making their records public would make them behave better.
If the newly-proposed rule is adopted, employers with 250 or more employees would no longer need to electronically submit information from OSHA Form 300 (Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) and Form 301 (Injury and Illness Incident Report).
The proposal also calls for all employers with 20 or more employees in designated industries would only be required to electronically file their annual 300A general summary of workplace illness and injuries, which contains less information.
OSHA argues the proposal also protects employee privacy, which it said the earlier rule jeopardized, especially when it came to OSHA Form 301, which collects sensitive information about medical treatment, the nature of the injury or illness, how the injury occurred and other personal data.
Critics of the earlier rule said this information could easily be used to identify individual workers.
The agency declared, “OSHA has reevaluated the utility of the Form 300 and 301 data for OSHA enforcement efforts and preliminarily determined that its (uncertain) enforcement value does not justify the reporting burden on employers, the burden on OSHA to collect, process, analyze, distribute, and programmatically apply the data, and – especially – the risks posed to worker privacy.”
