The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has begun a formal review of OSHA’s electronic recordkeeping and reporting rule that will revive Obama-era requirements for employers to submit injury and illness records to the agency, after they were largely rolled back in 2019 by the Trump administration.
Attorneys say employers should be ready to quickly resume compliance with a host of Obama-era OSHA policies linked to its contentious electronic reporting rule, including anti-retaliation measures that barred many workplace safety incentives, as the agency prepares to propose a new version of the regulation as soon as December.
OSHA plans to propose in December a rule to restore Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates that the Trump administration largely rolled back in 2019, according to its newly released Unified Agenda of regulatory actions that also targets December for proposing a long-delayed infectious-disease standard.
A newly published OSHA letter crafted during the final days of the Trump administration says the agency’s injury and illness recordkeeping mandate applies only once in situations where a worker suffers multiple injuries days apart but stemming from the same event, so that companies do not have to “double report” injuries.
OSHA and public health groups are at odds over whether to pause the appeal of a court challenge to the Trump-era rollback of the agency’s 2016 recordkeeping rule, with the Biden administration vowing to review and possibly reconsider the action but plaintiffs in the suit saying they will not support more than a short-term stay.
A federal district judge has rejected a lawsuit by public health groups and Democratic states aimed at reversing OSHA’s rollback of an Obama-era rule setting electronic reporting and recordkeeping mandates for employers, ruling that the reversal was within regulators’ discretion and that the groups lacked standing to sue.
OSHA is facing calls from public commenters to adopt a “prevention through design” (PtD) approach for its powered truck safety standard and incorporate several related data-gathering requirements in the rule based on an existing federal program that so far has focused mainly on building safety.
Democratic state attorneys general (AG) and other groups are urging a federal court to vacate the Trump administration’s rule rolling back OSHA’s electronic reporting and record-keeping requirements, arguing the rollback is not justified, is “plagued” by errors and otherwise violates administrative law.
As it weighs how and whether to adopt Obama-era worker injury and illness electronic reporting requirements, Cal/OSHA is facing questions over whether it has adequate resources to establish the infrastructure required for such a system, which could prove to be a deciding factor in whether the state opts to pursue a formal rulemaking.
With the backing of the Labor Department, major manufacturing and agriculture industry groups are asking a federal judge to resume their stayed litigation challenging OSHA's reporting and recordkeeping rule, with the industry groups signaling that the Trump administration rollback of the Obama-era measure they originally challenged did not go far enough.