Here are five notable OSHA and Cal/OSHA COVID-19 recordkeeping updates that we wanted to share with you:
1. Congressional Intervention About Cal/OSHA’s COVID-19 Recordkeeping FAQs
As we explained last year, Cal/OSHA’s May 27th COVID-19 Recordkeeping FAQs departed from Fed OSHA’s COVID-19 recordkeeping requirements in two key ways: (i) rejecting Fed OSHA’s recordability precondition of a positive COVID test; and (ii) flipping the burden of establishing work-relatedness on its head, setting instead a presumption of work-relatedness if any workplace exposure can be identified, even if the cause of the illness is just as likely to be attributable to a non-work exposure.
Aside from being bad policy that will result in many non-work related illnesses being recorded on California employers’ 300 Logs, Cal/OSHA is not legally permitted to deviate from Fed OSHA’s recordkeeping requirements.
Confirmed by a positive laboratory test of a respiratory specimen; and
“More likely than not” the result of a workplace exposure, based on reasonably available evidence, and the absence of any alternative (non-work) explanation for the employee’s illness.
Cal/OSHA’s May 27th guidance, however, breaks from both of those key requirements for COVID-19 recordkeeping, rejecting the need for a confirmed case and flipping the burden of establishing work-relatedness on its head, establishing instead a presumption of work-related if any workplace exposure can be identified, even if the cause of the illness is just as likely to be attributable to a non-work exposure.
Aside from being bad policy that will result in many illnesses being recorded on 300 Logs only in California that were not actually COVID-19 cases, and/or that were not caused by exposures in the workplace, Cal/OSHA’s unique COVID-19 recording criteria are not permitted by law.
More COVID-19 cases on your logs can create significant risk of liability. For example, there is no doubt an avalanche of wrongful death and personal injury suits waiting around the corner, and while recording an illness is not an admission of wrong-doing, it is an admission that the illness was likely spread in your workplace. Plaintiffs’ attorneys will make hay of that to show your exposure control efforts were insufficient, or to show that the illnesses experienced by their clients (customers, contractors, family members of employees, and others whose suits would not be barred by workers’ compensation exclusivity) likely were also contracted in your workplace or because of your workplace. And of course, more illnesses having to be recorded also creates more potential for Cal/OSHA citations for failure to record or failure to record timely or accurately.
The Coalition for Uniformity in COVID-19 Recordkeeping
Conn Maciel Carey organized and represents the Coalition for Uniformity in COVID-19 Recordkeeping, which is composed of a broad array of California employers impacted by Cal/OSHA’s COVID-19 recordkeeping requirements. Continue reading →
As we previously reported, in early April, the Head of Cal/OSHA, Division Chief Doug Parker, provided feedback about Cal/OSHA’s COVID-19 Recordkeeping and Reporting expectations. The signal to employers back then was that Cal/OSHA would be following Federal OSHA’s guidance on when employers must record COVID-19 cases on their 300 Logs, and that is not very often.
To be clear, while Fed OSHA’s latest COVID-19 Recordkeeping guidance does retreat from some of the early relief OSHA had offered employers, in substance, it merely changes the landscape around the edges — requiring more employers to analyze work-relatedness for COVID-19 cases. Still fed OSHA only requires recording or reporting COVID-19 cases where it is “more likely than not” that a COVID-19 case resulted from workplace exposure, based on reasonably available evidence, and the absence of any alternative (non-work) explanation for the employee’s illness.
Among other stark differences, Cal/OSHA’s new guidance flips the burden of establishing work-relatedness on its head. Now, according to Cal/OSHA, a COVID-19 case in California will be presumed to be work-related if any workplace exposure is identified, even if the cause of the illness is more likely attributable to a non-workplace exposure.
Confirmed Case
Unlike Fed OSHA’s previous and current recordkeeping guidance, Cal/OSHA’s FAQs now make clear that Cal/OSHA does NOT require a positive test for COVID-19 to be necessary to trigger recording requirements. Cal/OSHA states: Continue reading →
There are myriad workplace safety and health implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, but one OSHA regulatory obligation about which we have received countless questions in recent days is the requirement to record and/or report work-related cases of COVID-19. Below are two FAQs that describe the relevant analysis in more detail.
Do I have to record a case of COVID-19 of an employee on my OSHA 300 Log?
By regulation, the common cold and flu are exempt from OSHA’s recordkeeping and reporting requirements (29 CFR Part 1904.5(b)(2)(viii)):
“The illness is the common cold or flu (Note: contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, brucellosis, hepatitis A, or plague are considered work-related if the employee is infected at work).”
The rationale for the exemption is that the spread of the cold and flu are so pervasive that it is typically near impossible to identify the source of infection; i.e., there would be no reasonable way to determine whether it was more likely than not that the illness was caused by an exposure in the workplace.
Despite great sacrifice around the country, the scale of infection of COVID-19 is expected to soon spread like the flu and common cold, but OSHA has already expressed in guidance that COVID-19 is not subject to the cold/flu recordkeeping exemption:
“While 29 CFR 1904.5(b)(2)(viii) exempts recording of the common cold and flu, COVID-19 is a recordable illness when a worker is infected on the job.”
Industry has been advocating to OSHA to have the agency reconsider that initial declaration, but it does not appear OSHA will be exempting this novel strain of Coronavirus from the recordkeeping and reporting requirements any time soon. OSHA has been maintaining a Safety and Health Topics page for COVID-19 and separate Guidance on Preparing Workplaces for COVID-19 that it updates periodically as more information becomes available. In its most recent update to guidance, OSHA appeared to Continue reading →
This is your yearly reminder about the important February 1st deadline to prepare, certify and post your OSHA 300A Annual Summary of workplace injuries and illnesses, for all U.S. employers, except those with ten or fewer employees or those whose NAICS codes are in the set of low-hazard industries exempt from OSHA’s injury and illness recordkeeping requirements, such as dental offices, advertising services, and car dealers (see the exempted industries at Appendix A to Subpart B of Part 1904). The Form 300A is a summation of the workplace injuries and illnesses recorded on the OSHA 300 Log during the previous calendar year, as well as the total hours worked that year by all employees covered by the particular OSHA 300 Log.
Note that February 1st falls on a Saturday this year, but that does not affect the deadline to post. So, if there will be noone present at your workplace to make the posting on that Saturday, be sure to get your 300A posted by Friday, January 31st.
This February 1st requirement to prepare, certify and post 300A forms should not be confused with OSHA’s Electronic Recordkeeping Rule. The February 1st deadline is only about the internal hard copy posting of 300A data for your employees’ eyes. The E-Recordkeeping Rule, on the other hand, requires certain employers to electronically submit data from their 300A Annual Summary forms to OSHA through OSHA’s web portal – the Injury Tracking Application. The deadline for those submissions this year (i.e., to submit 300A data from 2019) is March 2, 2020. Click here for more information about OSHA’s E-Recordkeeping Rule.
By February 1st every year, covered employers must:
Review their OSHA 300 Log(s);
Verify the entries on the 300 Logs are complete and accurate;
Correct any deficiencies identified on the 300 Logs;
Use the injury data from the 300 Log to calculate an annual summary of injuries and illnesses, and input those calculations into the 300A Annual Summary Form; and
Have a “Company Executive” certify the accuracy of the 300 Log and the 300A Summary Form.
Five Common 300A Mistakes that Employers Make
We frequently see employers make the following five mistakes related to this annual duty to prepare, post and certify the injury and illness recordkeeping summary: Continue reading →
This is your yearly reminder about the important February 1st deadline to prepare, certify and post your OSHA 300A Annual Summary of workplace injuries and illnesses, for all U.S. employers, except those with ten or fewer employees or those whose NAICS code is in the set of low-hazard industries exempt from OSHA’s injury and illness recordkeeping requirements, such as dental offices, advertising services, and car dealers (see the exempted industries at Appendix A to Subpart B of Part 1904).
This February 1st requirement to prepare, certify and post 300A forms should not be confused with OSHA’s new-ish Electronic Recordkeeping Rule. The February 1st deadline is only about the internal hard copy posting of 300A data for your employees’ eyes. The E-Recordkeeping Rule, on the other hand, requires certain employers to electronically submit data from their 300A Annual Summary forms to OSHA through OSHA’s web portal – the Injury Tracking Application. The deadline for those submissions this year (i.e., to submit 300A data from 2018) is March 2, 2019.
By February 1st every year, however, employers must:
Review their OSHA 300 Log(s);
Verify the entries on the 300 Log are complete and accurate;
Correct any deficiencies identified on the 300 Log;
Use the injury data from the 300 Log to calculate an annual summary of injuries and illnesses and complete the 300A Annual Summary Form; and
Certify the accuracy of the 300 Log and the 300A Summary Form.
The Form 300A is a summation of the workplace injuries and illnesses recorded on the OSHA 300 Log during the previous calendar year, as well as the total hours worked that year by all employees covered by the particular OSHA 300 Log.
Five Common 300A Mistakes that Employers Make
We frequently see employers make the following four mistakes related to this annual duty to prepare, post and certify the injury and illness recordkeeping summary: Continue reading →
This is your annual reminder about the important annual February 1st deadline to prepare, certify and post your OSHA 300A Annual Summary of workplace injuries and illnesses, for all U.S. employers, except those with ten or fewer employees or those whose NAICS code is for the set of low hazard industries exempted from OSHA’s injury and illness recordkeeping requirements, such as dental offices, advertising services, and car dealers (see the exempted industries at Appendix A to Subpart B of Part 1904).
This February 1 requirement to prepare, certify and post 300A forms should not be confused with OSHA’s new Electronic Recordkeeping Rule. The February 1st deadline is only about the internal posting of 300A data for your employees’ eyes. The E-Recordkeeping Rule, on the other hand, is a new requirement for certain employers to electronically submit data from their 300A Annual Summary forms to OSHA through a web portal. Depending on how OSHA resolves an internal policy debate and the outcome of legal challenges from labor groups, that data may also be shared publicly.
By February 1st every year, employers must:
Review their OSHA 300 Log(s);
Verify the entries on the 300 Log are complete and accurate;
Correct any deficiencies identified on the 300 Log;
Use the injury data from the 300 Log to calculate an annual summary of injuries and illnesses and complete the 300A Annual Summary Form; and
Certify the accuracy of the 300 Log and the 300A Summary Form.
The Form 300A is a summation of the workplace injuries and illnesses recorded on the OSHA 300 Log during the previous calendar year, as well as the total hours worked that year by all employees covered by the particular OSHA 300 Log.
Four Common 300A Mistakes that Employers Make
We see employers make the following four common mistakes related to this annual injury and illness Recordkeeping duty: Continue reading →
As we have described in previous articles, OSHA included in the new electronic recordkeeping rule, a set of new obligations requiring employers to implement “reasonable reporting” procedures for employees to report to their employers work-related injuries. Also included are a broad and vague new set of provisions that expand OSHA’s enforcement authority to prevent employer retaliation against employees who report injuries and illnesses. OSHA has provided little guidance on precisely what the agency intends by “reasonable” reporting procedures or what types of policies may violate the new anti-retaliation provisions, but we understand from past policy statements and regulatory history that OSHA will at least focus on reporting deadlines, safety incentive programs, post-injury drug testing, and management compensation or bonuses tied to injury rates.
Industry plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas (TEXO ABC/AGC, Inc., et al. v. Perez, Civil Action No. 3:16-cv-01998-D) shortly after the final rule was promulgated, challenging these anti-retaliation elements of the rule on the grounds that OSHA did not show that the anti-relation provisions would actually reduce injury rates, and further that the agency did not follow requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”) in the rulemaking process. The plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction seeking to prevent OSHA from beginning to enforce these provisions pending Continue reading →
OSHA’s recent Injury and Illness Recordkeeping reform has created quite a stir for employers. As we discussed in an earlier article about the new Recordkeeping rule, OSHA now requires employers to electronically submit to OSHA their injury and illness recordkeeping data. OSHA will, in turn, publish the data online for all the world to dissect. It turns out, however, the electronic recordkeeping data submission elements of the new rule may not be the most problematic for employers.
The new Recordkeeping rule also increases employers’ obligations to implement “reasonable reporting” procedures for employees to report to their employers the work related injuries they incur, and expands OSHA’s enforcement authority by introducing a vague new set of anti-retaliation provisions. To date, employers have seen little guidance about what OSHA means by reasonable reporting procedures or what types of policies may violate the new anti-retaliation provisions.
Particularly controversial is the impact of OSHA’s new rule on employers’ policies for post-injury drug testing, safety incentive programs, and executive compensation and bonuses. Although none of those words appear in the amended Recordkeeping regulation, OSHA addressed each in the Preamble to the Final Rule.
These topics have been on OSHA’s radar for nearly a decade, dating back to a 2008 Report issued by the House of Representative Committee on Education and Labor entitled “Hidden Tragedy: Underreporting of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses.” From that time, OSHA has been making efforts to address a perceived culture of underreporting injuries and retaliation against employees who do report workplace injuries and illnesses. OSHA has used every tool at its disposal to chip away at employer policies and practices that purportedly discriminate against employees who report injuries, or that attempt to deter employees from reporting injuries in the first place.
Even before this rulemaking, OSHA has taken action against policies that OSHA believes discourage reporting or recording of work related injuries. For example, Continue reading →
As the clock winds down on the Obama Administration, OSHA has been rushing out a series of proposed amendments to its Injury & Illness Recordkeeping regulations (29 C.F.R. Part 1904). Among them is a new final rule to “Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses,” which will require hundreds of thousands of employers to electronically submit their injury and illness logs (and in many instances, their detailed incident reports also) each year. More importantly, for no apparent safety reason, OSHA intends to publish employers’ injury data and incident reports online.
The new recordkeeping rule requires establishments with 250 or more employees to submit to OSHA annually their OSHA 300 Logs, 301 Incident Reports, and 300A Annual Summaries, and requires establishments with 20-249 employees in certain so-called “high hazard industries” to submit to OSHA annually the information from their 300A Annual Summaries only.
The question goes to those two threshold triggers for reporting. Specifically, do employers count the:
Total number of employees across the entire company, and if that total number exceeds 20 or 249 employees, report the applicable recordkeeping data for all locations; OR
Employee numbers at each individual location, and report the applicable recordkeeping data for only locations where the employee count exceeds 20 or 249?
Historically, unless OSHA opened an enforcement inspection at an employer’s workplace or the Bureau of Labor Statistics requested an employer to participate in its annual injury data survey, employers’ OSHA 300 Logs and related forms remained strictly in-house. Employers kept the data and their OSHA logs in their HR or Safety Department office, posted them internally for employees to view for a couple of months, used the data themselves to make decisions about how to reduce risk of injury and illness in their workplaces, and then stored the records in a cabinet or desk drawer for five years. In a major policy shift, the new rule requires hundreds of thousands of employers to proactively submit these historically private records to OSHA, which in turn will publish the data online for all the world to see.
All establishments with 250 or more employees in industries covered by the recordkeeping regulation must submit to OSHA annually their injury and illness data and information from their OSHA 300 Logs, 301 Incident Reports, and 300A Annual Summaries.
Earlier this year, we wrote about a very significant rulemaking to amend OSHA’s injury and illness recordkeeping regulations to require employers to proactively submit their injury logs and reports to OSHA on a regular and frequent basis. We understand OSHA is committed to implementing that rule before the Obama Administration shuts out the lights and hands over the keys. The data submission recordkeeping rule is not, however, the only effort underway by OSHA to reform its recordkeeping regulations.
In what is certain to land OSHA back in court, OSHA plans to soon roll out a rule that attempts to end-run around the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision that rejected the Agency’s historical doctrine that violations of OSHA injury and illness recordkeeping requirements continued each day an employer’s log remained incomplete or inaccurate, and declared instead that recordkeeping violations may only be cited within a strict six month statute of limitations. OSHA has attached the misleading name “Clarification of Employer’s Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness” to this rulemaking.
The driver behind OSHA’s proposed amendment to its injury and illness recordkeeping rule is not to clarify anything, but rather to attempt to undo the D.C. Circuit’s very clear 2012 decision in AKM LLC v. Secretary of Labor (aka the Volks Constructors case). In Volks Constructors, OSHA argued that every day the logs remain inaccurate, the employer commits a new violation, and extends the enforcement deadline. In other words, even though Congress set a six month statute of limitations for OSHA violations, OSHA believed the statute of limitations for injury and illness recordkeeping violations was five years plus six months due to the “continuing” nature of recordkeeping violations. Applying this expansive and flawed view of the statute of limitations historically gave OSHA wide latitude in recordkeeping enforcement. Continue reading →
This is your annual reminder about the important annual February 1st deadline to prepare, certify and post your OSHA 300A Annual Summary of workplace injuries and illnesses, for all U.S. employers, except those with ten or fewer employees or those whose NAICS code is for the set of low hazard industries exempted from OSHA’s injury and illness recordkeeping requirements, such as dental offices, advertising services, and car dealers (see the exempted industries at Appendix A to Subpart B of Part 1904).
This February 1 requirement to prepare, certify and post 300A forms should not be confused with OSHA’s new Electronic Recordkeeping Rule. The February 1st deadline is only about the internal posting of 300A data for your employees’ eyes. The E-Recordkeeping Rule, on the other hand, is a new requirement for certain employers to electronically submit data from their 300A Annual Summary forms to OSHA through a web portal. Depending on how OSHA resolves an internal policy debate and the outcome of legal challenges from labor groups, that data may also be shared publicly.
By February 1st every year, employers must:
Review their OSHA 300 Log(s);
Verify the entries on the 300 Log are complete and accurate;
Correct any deficiencies identified on the 300 Log;
Use the injury data from the 300 Log to calculate an annual summary of injuries and illnesses and complete the 300A Annual Summary Form; and
Certify the accuracy of the 300 Log and the 300A Summary Form.
The Form 300A is a summation of the workplace injuries and illnesses recorded on the OSHA 300 Log during the previous calendar year, as well as the total hours worked that year by all employees covered by the particular OSHA 300 Log.
Four Common 300A Mistakes that Employers Make
We see employers make the following four common mistakes related to this annual injury and illness Recordkeeping duty:
Not having a management representative with high enough status within the company “certify” the 300A;
Not posting a 300A for years in which there were no recordable injuries;
Not maintaining a copy of the certified version of the 300A form; and
Not updating prior years’ 300 Logs based on newly discovered information about previously unrecorded injuries or changes to injuries that were previously recorded.
Certifying the 300 Log and 300A Annual Summary
The 300 Log and the 300A Annual Summary Form are required to be “certified” by a “company executive.” Specifically what the company executives are certifying is that they:
Personally examined the 300A Annual Summary Form;
Personally examined the OSHA 300 Log from which the 300A Annual Summary was developed; and
Reasonably believe, based on their knowledge of their companies’ recordkeeping processes that the 300A Annual Summary Form is correct and complete.
A common mistake employers make is to have a management representative sign the 300A Form who is not at a senior enough level in the company to constitute a “company executive.” As set forth in 1904.32(b)(4), company executives include only the following individuals:
An owner of the company (only if the company is a sole proprietorship or partnership);
An officer of the corporation;
The highest ranking company official working at the establishment; or
The immediate supervisor of the highest ranking company official working at the establishment.
Posting the 300A Annual Summary
After certifying the 300A, OSHA’s Recordkeeping regulations require employers to post the certified copy of the 300A Summary Form in the location at the workplace where employee notices are usually posted. The 300A must remain posted there for three months, through April 30th.
Another common mistake employers make is to not prepare or post a 300A Form in those years during which there were no recordable injuries or illnesses at the establishment. Even when there have been no recordable injuries, OSHA regulations still require employers to complete the 300A form, entering zeroes into each column total, and to post the 300A just the same.
Maintaining the 300A for Five Years
After the certified 300A Annual Summaries have been posted between February 1st and April 30th, employers may take down the 300A Form, but must maintain for five years following the end of the prior calendar year at the facility covered by the form or at a central location, a copy of:
The underlying OSHA 300 Log;
The certified 300A Annual Summary Form; and
Any corresponding 301 Incident Report forms.
In this technology era, many employers have transitioned to using electronic systems to prepare and store injury and illness recordkeeping forms. As a result, another common mistake employers make is to keep only the electronic version of the 300A, and not the version that was printed, “certified,” typically by a handwritten signature, and posted at the facility. Accordingly, those employers have no effective way to demonstrate to OSHA during an inspection or enforcement action that the 300A had been certified.
Finally, another common mistake employers make is to put away old 300 Logs and never look back, even if new information comes to light about injuries recorded on those logs. However, OSHA’s Recordkeeping regulations require employers during the five year retention period to update OSHA 300 Logs with newly discovered recordable injuries or illnesses, or to correct previously recorded injuries and illnesses to reflect changes that have occurred in the classification or other details. This requirement applies only to the 300 Logs; i.e., technically there is no duty to update 300A Forms or OSHA 301 Incident Reports.
Not to be Confused with Electronic Recordkeeping
As mentioned above, the February 1st deadline is separate and apart from the electronic data submission requirement of OSHA’s new Electronic Recordkeeping Rule. The deadline in 2018 for employers to electronically share data from their 2017 300A forms with OSHA is currently set for July 1, 2018, but the rule itself may change, and so too may that July deadline. OSHA has signaled through status reports in a federal district court proceeding and in its semi-annual regulatory agenda that it is working on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to reopen the E-Recordkeeping Rule and change it or rescind it. The most likely changes we predict are limiting the data that will be required to be submitted to only 300A Annual Summary data, rather than the full panoply of recordkeeping data, regardless of the size of the employer, and perhaps some other changes to limit the set of employers covered by the rule. Here are a few articles we have written about OSHA’s E-Recordkeeping Rule.
Accordingly, although the web portal is now accepting 2017 data, we encourage employers to wait until close to the July deadline to submit data, because the rule itself may change and the deadline may be pushed to allow more time for OSHA to change the rule.
As we wind down the year and head into the waning days of the Obama Administration, we look with interest at the Administration’s latest, and likely final, Semi-Annual Regulatory Agenda, published November 20th.
If one were a jaded OSHA defense lawyer like me, the thought that publication of the Agency’s list of regulatory priorities and planned rulemaking activities on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, when most of the country is focused on family, preparing a Thanksgiving feast, and gearing up for some good football, might have been intentional. “Maybe they won’t notice?” Well, we did, and we thought it would be useful for our readers to have a summary of OSHA’s final priorities in the regulatory arena as the Obama Administration focuses on legacy, and what they would like to accomplish before Secretary Perez and Assistant Secretary for OSHA David Michaels turn out the lights next year at 200 Constitution Avenue.
“So many workplace injuries, illnesses and fatalities are preventable. They not only put workers in harm’s way, they jeopardize their economic security, often forcing families out of the middle class and into poverty. The Department’s safety and health regulatory proposals are based on the responsibility of employers to provide workers with workplaces that do not threaten their safety or health and we reject the false choice between worker safety and economic growth. Our efforts will both save lives and improve employers’ bottom lines.”
One note about OSHA’s robust list of planned regulatory activity for 2016 — and an apt idiom for an analysis of the Thanksgiving Regulatory Agenda — OSHA’s eyes are too big for its stomach. While the Agency’s plans look ambitious and aggressive, if history is a guide, the cumbersome rulemaking machinery will prevent much of these plans from coming to fruition, especially in the final few months before the presidential election. Unless 2016 is an exception, this means there really are only a few productive months remaining for OSHA to accomplish some subset of its long list of priority actions. Looking at the roadblocks Dr. Michaels has already faced in the regulatory arena throughout his term – some of which came from the White House itself – it is unlikely OSHA will accomplish much of what appears in its final Regulatory Agenda.
Notwithstanding, it is important to understand the Agency’s rulemaking plans for numerous reasons, the most important of which is that you can count on the fact that Dr. Michaels’ last priorities will become the first priorities of the next Administration, should a Democrat again take the White House.
Here is our summary of OSHA’s top five regulatory priorities for 2016: Continue reading →
“Within twenty-four (24) hours after … an employee’s amputation …, as a result of a work-related incident, you must report the … amputation … to OSHA. . . . For an … amputation …, you must only report the event to OSHA if it occurs within twenty-four (24) hours of the work-related incident.”
The long and short of the new reporting requirement is that an amputation constitutes an automatic report to OSHA even if it does not result in a hospitalization or any days away from work, or even require medical treatment beyond first aid. There are, however, several key nuances that employers must be aware of before they pick up the phone to call OSHA.
What Types of Injuries Should be Reported as an Amputation?
As an initial matter, an employer must understand what constitutes an amputation. The rule defines “amputations” as:
“[T]he traumatic loss of a limb or other external body part. Amputations include a part, such as a limb or appendage, that has been severed, cut off, amputated (either completely or partially); fingertip amputations with or without bone loss; medical amputations resulting from irreparable damage; amputations of body parts that have since been reattached. Amputations do not include avulsions, enucleations, deglovings, scalpings, severed ears, or broken or chipped teeth.”
Although this definition may seem straightforward, there is ambiguity around the distinction between a “partial amputation” and an avulsion or laceration. Based on OSHA’s definition, the term “amputation” would require Continue reading →
As the clock winds down on the Obama Administration, OSHA has been rushing out a series of proposed amendments to its Injury & Illness Recordkeeping regulations (29 C.F.R. Part 1904), but none of them has the potential to be as impactful to employers as much as the proposed requirement for employers to make frequent submission of injury data to OSHA. Specifically, in November 2013, OSHA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for a proposed rule to “Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses.”
The rule was widely-criticized by stakeholders through the notice and comment period, but OSHA has advanced the rule to the final stage of the rulemaking process. Specifically, on October 5, 2015, OSHA submitted a draft final rule to the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). OIRA is a division of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that is responsible to review near final proposed regulations, particularly significant regulatory actions. Generally, OMB has up to 90 days to review a rule, but that period can be extended.
This particular proposed rule would require many employers to electronically submit their injury-and-illness logs (and in many instances, their detailed incident reports also) to OSHA on a regular and frequent basis, as often as quarterly for large employers. For no apparent safety reason, OSHA also intends to publish employers’ injury data and incident reports online.
This proposal would dramatically shift the current recordkeeping program. Currently, unless OSHA inspects an employer or the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) requests that the employer participate in an annual injury recordkeeping survey, OSHA 300 Logs and related forms remain strictly in-house. Employers keep the data and their OSHA logs in their Human Resources’ or Safety Director’s office, post them for employees for a couple of months, and then store them in a desk drawer for five years.
Requirements of the Proposed Rule. The proposed rule would impose two different burdens on employers:
Employers with 250+ workers (at peak employment during the prior calendar year) must submit on a quarterly basis injury and illness recordkeeping logs and detailed incident reports to OSHA (i.e., the 300 logs and 301 reports);
Employers with 20+ workers in certain “high hazard industries” must submit to OSHA their 300A Annual Summary data of recordable injuries on an annual bases.
Employers will be required to submit the data electronically to OSHA, supposedly via a secure website that has not yet been designed. These reports will include an incredible amount of data, including employees’ personal and health-related information. In theory, OSHA would scrub employee-identifying information (but not employer-identifying information), and publish Continue reading →
The new regulations differ from the long-standing incident reporting rule in four ways:
Lower the threshold for proactively reporting a catastrophic incident from the hospitalization of three or more employees to thehospitalization of a single employee;
Add amputations (including partial amputations) and loss of an eye to the types of injuries that employers must proactively report;
Requirements of the New Reporting Rule. The reporting rule has been long-referred to informally as the “Fat-Cat” rule because it requires employers to report to OSHA all incidents that result in an employee fatality (Fat) or a catastrophe (Cat). The new regulation redefines catastrophe. Historically, a catastrophe had been defined as an incident that resulted in the overnight hospitalization for treatment of three or more employees. The Agency views the new report triggering events as indicative of serious hazards at a workplace. Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA David Michaels explained that:
“hospitalizations and amputations [are] sentinel events, indicating that serious hazards are likely to be present at a workplace and that an intervention is warranted to protect the other workers at the establishment.”
In addition to lowering the threshold from three to one employee hospitalizations, OSHA also changed the definition of “hospitalization.” Historically, an employee’s overnight hospital stay triggered the reporting requirement. Under the new rule, whether the hospitalization is a reportable event turns not on whether the employee stays overnight, but rather, whether the employee is formally admitted to the “in-patient” service of the hospital or clinic. The visit, however, must involve medical care after the in-patient admission. A hospital visit only for observation or diagnostic testing, even if it involves in-patient admission, does not constitute a reportable event.
The concepts of “formal admission” and “in-patient service” seem to be causing significant confusion in the new rule’s early stages. While OSHA continues to Continue reading →
work-relatedness if any workplace exposure can be identified, even if the cause of the illness is just as likely to be attributable to a non-work exposure.
to give the court additional time to consider a pending motion for preliminary injunction to indefinitely delay enforcement. The new enforcement delay runs through December 1, 2016.
