After an initial delay of 5 months, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) has once again pushed back the deadline for the electronic submission of injury and illness reports. The new due date is December 15, 2017. With only days to go before the previous December 1 deadline, OSHA has invoked a legal exception which allows an agency action to be immediately effective if there is “good cause” rather than waiting on the usual rule-making process.
The Improve Tracking of Workplace Injury and Illness rule requires establishments with 250 employees, as well as smaller establishments in certain high-risk industries, to electronically submit data from the previous year’s Form 300A illness and injury log through OSHA’s new Injury Tracking Application (ITA). The deadline for these submissions was originally set for July 1, 2017, but the agency chose to delay this requirement until December 1, 2017 in order to allow more time for the creation of the new secure website for data collection.
The online portal eventually launched on August 1, 2017, but a potential security breach necessitated a shutdown for nearly two weeks. According to a scan conducted by the National Information Technology Center, “there was no breach of the data in the ITA and… no information in the ITA was compromised.” However, it did diminish the time which had been granted for employers to become familiar with the new system. The new 15-day delay will essentially restore the period of ITA availability to a full four months.
In its press release, OSHA reminded those operating under OSHA-approved State Plans that some have not yet integrated the electronic submission requirement into their own regulations. Private employers in California, Maryland, Minnesota, South Carolina, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming will not have to submit their data until their states comply with federal requirements.
Although covered employers will have to comply with the December 15 deadline in 2017, it is unclear whether this requirement will live on in future years. OSHA has indicated that it plans to “issue a separate proposal to reconsider, revise, or remove other provisions of the prior final rule,” although it has not yet indicated what those revisions may encompass. Subscribe to our blog or follow us on social media to keep up with OSHA news as well as the latest in labor law and posting compliance.