Regulatory Developments

OSHA Proposes Requiring Electronic Submission of 300A Forms Only

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has said that it wants to reconsider, revise, or remove provisions of the Improved Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses final rule—one of the reasons the requirements have been delayed. The recently released fall 2017 Unified Regulatory Agenda provides some insight into what we should expect from OSHA.

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According to the agenda, the Agency intends to issue a proposed rule limiting the electronic submission of injury and illness data to 300A forms for all covered establishments. Currently, establishments with 250 or more employees are required to electronically submit all three OSHA injury and illness recordkeeping forms—the 300 log, 300A annual summary, and the 301 incident report—starting in 2018.

OSHA intended to publish the collected injury and illness data in an effort to increase workplace safety. However, large employers have expressed concern about personally identifiable information (PII) being published. OSHA stated that it would not release PII. But in this recent regulatory agenda, OSHA states that it cannot guarantee that PII will not be released.

Based on this, the proposed rule will require all covered establishments to only electronically submit data from the 300A annual summary, in which no PII is listed. OSHA will also seek comment on the costs and benefits of adding the Employer Identification Number (EIN) to the data collection to increase the likelihood that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) would be able to match OSHA-collected data to BLS Survey of Occupational Injury and Illness (SOII) data and potentially reduce the burden on employers that are required to report injury and illness data both to OSHA (for the electronic recordkeeping requirement) and to the BLS for the SOII.

We’ll keep you up-to-date on the proposal, so stay tuned.

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