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Rollback of OSHA Workplace Injury Reporting Rules
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued a
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NRPM) that will roll back rules requiring companies with 250 or more workers to electronically submit data from the OSHA 300 Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses and OSHA 301 Injury and Illness Incident Report.
OSHA decided in May not to require or accept injury and illness data from the employers. A lawsuit filed over the summer by Public Citizen, the American Public Health Association, and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists says the agency violated its rulemaking procedures when it initially suspended the requirement.
"OSHA did not publish a notice of the suspension of the July 1, 2018, deadline in the Federal Register and did not solicit public comment on it. Instead, OSHA announced the suspension of the deadline for the 2017 data on its website," the lawsuit states.
As of now, OSHA has retained only the requirement for affected establishments to submit data from Form 300A, the Annual Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses. OSHA claims the action is necessary to protect the privacy of workers. But according to Public Citizen, the privacy concerns ignore "decades of existing U.S. Department of Labor practices and the measures in OSHA's original rulemaking to protect confidential information."
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