OSHA Proposes Additional Recordkeeping Requirements for Employers in High-Hazard Industries

A proposed rule from OSHA would amend the agency’s standard for Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illness to require employers in certain high-hazard industries to electronically submit additional information from their OSHA 300 log, on which companies record work-related illnesses and injuries, and their injury and illness incident reports. The proposed rule would apply to employers with 100 or more employees in 98 industries specified in an appendix.

“The proposed requirement would provide systematic access for OSHA to the establishment-specific, case-specific injury and illness information that these establishments are already required to collect,” according to the text of the rule published yesterday in the Federal Register.

In addition, the new rule would update the classification system used to determine the industries covered by the electronic submission requirement and require organizations to include their company name when making electronic submissions. The rule would also remove the requirement in the current standard for all employers, regardless of industry, with more than 250 workers to electronically submit injury and illness information to OSHA.

The requirement for electronic submission of injury and illness data was a feature of a final rule published by OSHA in 2016. This requirement applied to establishments with more than 250 employees. OSHA says that the submission requirement from the 2016 rule was not fully implemented and that the agency did not collect any information electronically from employers covered by the rule. OSHA revoked the requirement in 2019, citing concerns about the privacy of electronic data and the resources required to secure it. The new proposed rule states that these concerns have been alleviated by technology that can protect sensitive data and saves resources by automating the process of removing it.

Comments on the proposed rule are due by May 31. Instructions for submitting comments are available from the Federal Register.