The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration is proposing amendments to its occupational injury and illness recordkeeping regulation, 29 CFR 1904.41. The current regulation requires certain employers to electronically submit injury and illness information – that they are required to keep – to OSHA. The agency uses these reports to identify and respond to emerging hazards and makes aspects of the information publicly available.
As OSHA continues to update its 2016 rule on recording and reporting workplace injuries and illnesses, organizations should be aware of new policies that affect how they treat – and reward – safety in the workplace.
OSHA Injury / Illness Recordkeeping and Reporting 29 CFR 1904
January 7, 2019
According to OSHA, an injury or illness is considered work related if an event or exposure in the work environment caused or contributed to the condition or significantly aggravated a preexisting condition. Work-relatedness is presumed for injuries and illnesses resulting from events or exposures occurring in the workplace, unless an exception specifically applies.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released this week show that the incidence rate for non-fatal occupational injuries and illnesses in the meat and poultry packing and processing industry reached an all-time industry low.
One month after ISHN published its October issue cover story on Tesla’s quest to have the safest factory in the world, Tesla’s safety and health practices were again in the news. On November 5, 2018, the Center for Investigative Reporting published an article, “Inside Tesla’s factory, a medical clinic designed to ignore injured workers.”
Dan Petersen, one of the great thinkers in the history of occupational safety, in a 2005 book, “Measurement of Safety Performance,” tore apart the traditional barometers of safety performance, the OSHA total case incident rate, total lost-workday cases, fatalities and other measures.
If you work in safety in a high-hazard industry, would you be worried if your company injury and illness data sat on OSHA’s website to be accessed by the public? Would you fear publicizing the data could damage your company’s reputation?
Safety is a core value for the oil and natural gas industry, which works to improve safety in the workplace through ongoing research, standards development, training, information sharing, and advocacy.
These efforts are paying off. The injury and illness rate for the U.S. oil and natural gas industry remains well below the national average for all private sectors.
Fewer than half of all employers required to send their injury and illness information into OSHA last year sent in the information. “The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was expecting about 350,000 summaries to be submitted by Dec. 31, the agency numbers provided to Bloomberg Environment March 7 show. Instead, employers required to participate submitted 153,653 reports, OSHA said.”