The Labor Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) in its annual report of the department’s top management challenges is highlighting the need for OSHA to address workplace violence, ensure employers report injuries and illnesses, and inspect as many worksites as possible with a limited number of inspectors.
OSHA is confirming that employers may use their own electronic systems and forms to track workplace injuries and illnesses as long as the alternative methods meet specific regulatory requirements for equivalency, while noting the agency does not endorse any commercial products.
A newly published article by former OSHA official David Michaels highlights how newly available OSHA injury data can identify predictable risks, offering opportunities to improve safety standards, reduce workplace injuries, and prevent future harm by implementing more targeted and effective injury prevention strategies.
Labor groups and employers are offering widely divergent responses to OSHA’s release of “comprehensive” workplace safety data from the first year of its long-debated electronic recordkeeping and reporting program, with industry fearing misuse of the information while unions and their allies are welcoming it as a major step for transparency.
OSHA has posted online injury and illness tracking data from 2023 that employers provided as part of the first compliance cycle for its electronic recordkeeping and reporting rule earlier this year, a move the agency says will allow stakeholders to identify safety hazards though the agency is not yet providing its own analysis of the reports.
Attorneys for an industry law firm used a recent webinar to highlight what they say are likely pitfalls for employers as OSHA’s electronic recordkeeping and reporting rule comes into effect this year, including a heightened need to track injuries as they happen and the threat of repeated citations if a company fails to implement the new program.
OSHA is taking a broad view of when a worker’s injury can be considered “work-related” in a new guidance letter holding that an unprovoked car crash and shooting on public roads still meets the test, and rejecting an employer’s suggestion that such “unforeseeable third-party criminal acts” can overcome the general presumption that any on-the-job incident falls under the agency’s recordkeeping mandates.
OSHA has unveiled its final rule re-establishing electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates for many employers, largely standing behind the 2022 proposal while narrowing several sector-specific exclusions that unions and their allies criticized in public comments.
OSHA has sent a final rule expected to re-establish Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates to the Federal Register for publication, appearing to cut off long-stayed litigation over the Trump administration’s rollback of those requirements while setting the stage for a potential court challenge from employers.
OSHA is seeking to release by the end of this month long-awaited final rules on both electronic recordkeeping mandates and COVID-19 infection controls in healthcare facilities, alongside several proposed policies, while delaying other rulemakings from their previous timelines -- some by over a year, according to its latest Unified Agenda of rulemaking actions.