A top OSHA official says the agency's regulatory initiatives to reduce exposures to crystalline silica, tackle hazards from confined spaces in construction, put in place an online injury recordkeeping system, and help prevent slips, trips and falls on working surfaces are among the major rules that OSHA is most intent on trying to finish in the waning years of the Obama administration.
The Republican takeover of the Senate likely foretells huge new difficulties for OSHA's regulatory and enforcement agenda, with one prediction especially dire for the agency: that the GOP will almost certainly try to obstruct, or even dash altogether, longtime efforts to issue a rule clamping down on crystalline silica exposures, Washington sources say.
OSHA rolled out final injury reporting regulations Thursday that give the agency broader reach in collecting workplace injury data -- including one option for employers to file electronic reports -- with new requirements on notifying OSHA of amputations, hospital stays of one or more employees, and loss of a worker's eye, along with a sweeping update to work site classification codes for injury logs.
OSHA is looking at revising its controversial electronic recordkeeping proposed rule to make it even tougher on employers by potentially mandating employer notifications to workers and strengthening whistleblower protections in response to some stakeholders' concerns that the proposed electronic posting of information might lead employers to retaliate against employees who report injuries and illnesses.
A plastics industry group charges OSHA's proposed rule to mandate electronic filing of injury and illness records quarterly at large firms -- information that would later be disseminated on the Internet -- fails to qualify for an exemption from Privacy Act provisions that bar agencies from publicly distributing data concerning individuals.
Business advocates intend to make the privacy of employees and OSHA's logistical ability to scrub employer injury and illness reports of any worker-identifying information part of the backbone of their vigorous effort to thwart OSHA's planned rulemaking to mandate electronic submission of records which would then be disseminated on the Internet.
OSHA's proposal to mandate electronic submission and online posting of injury and illness data has ignited a dispute among worker and industry advocates over the precedence of federal agencies collecting data in that manner and over OSHA's statutory authority to issue the planned regulations, sources told Inside OSHA Online as comments flowed into the regulatory docket to meet a Monday (March 10) deadline for feedback on the contentious rule proposed last fall.
OSHA has extended by two days, until March 10, the comment period for its proposed rule to add electronic injury and illness submission requirements to the agency's recordkeeping rule.
Some employers could try to suppress the number of injuries and illness reports that formally show up on their OSHA logs, resulting in incomplete and less useful overall data, under a proposed new system requiring large employers to submit the records electronically every quarter, say experts on both sides of a rapidly escalating debate over OSHA's planned rule.
OSHA chief David Michaels on Thursday (Jan. 9) urged public comments on OSHA's plan to change recordkeeping rules to mandate quarterly electronic reporting of injuries by large companies, as the agency convened a meeting in Washington to hear views on the proposed regulation.