The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) recently announced that will not require electronic submissions of injury and illness logs by July 1, 2017 as expected. In first an email and then a statement released on OSHA’s website, the agency informed stakeholders that it planned to propose an extension to the due date required by the controversial Improve Tracking of Workplace Injury and Illness rule.
This isn’t the first time this rule has been delayed by OSHA. The Improve Tracking of Workplace Injury and Illness Final Rule was published in May of 2016, consisting of two major parts with staggered effective dates. The anti-retaliation provision, which requires employers to ensure that reporting procedures are “reasonable” and to inform employees of their right to report workplace injuries and illnesses without facing retaliation, went into effect on August 1, 2016. However, enforcement was delayed first until November 1 and then until December 1 of 2016 to allow concerned employers additional time to comply.
The electronic recordkeeping portion of the rule went into effect on January 1, 2017, requiring establishments with 250 employees, as well as establishments in certain high-risk industries with 20 to 248 employees, to electronically submit their 2016 injury and illness logs by July 1, 2017. The transition from paper to electronic methods of data submission would likely have been relatively uncontroversial, but OSHA announced plans to create a searchable public database of the submitted information, prompting objections – and lawsuits – from individual employers as well as business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the General Contractors of America.
OSHA officials referred to the publicization of company-specific injury and illness information as a “nudge” to employers, providing additional incentive for employers to focus on employee safety and health. Although some employers and business groups, such as the American Sustainable Business Council, embraced the opportunity to share data for the sake of worker safety and a healthy economy, others balked at what they characterized as public shaming, pointing out that an instance of workplace injury or illness is not necessarily indicative of an unsafe workplace. Although OSHA stated that they would screen data to avoid revealing personal details, many employers also expressed concern over the privacy of their employees’ health data.
OSHA spokeswoman Mandy Craft told the Washington Post that the rule has been delayed in order to address employer concerns about meeting reporting obligations under the July 1 deadline. Several construction industry associations, however, asked on May 5, 2017 for the Department of Labor, newly headed by R. Alexander Acosta, to not only delay enforcement but to reexamine OSHA’s legal authority under the OSH Act to enact such a rule. OSHA’S confirmation of the indefinite delay came soon after.
At this point, only time will tell whether OSHA will reopen the rulemaking process in order to amend or eliminate the rule, delay indefinitely, or set a new date for companies to submit data. Employers can keep up with the latest developments by monitoring OSHA’s recordkeeping page – or follow Compliance Poster Company on Facebook or Twitter for the latest updates on this and more in federal and state labor law news.