Beginning January 1, 2024, more employers will
be required to electronically submit detailed information about
their workplace injuries and illnesses to the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration (OSHA) every year.
OSHA recently published a final rule amending its workplace
injury and illness recordkeeping regulations (29 CFR Part 1904) to
require electronic submission of injury and illness data that
employers were previously only required to keep in their internal
records.
OSHA requires covered employers to maintain records of their
employees’ work-related injuries and illnesses on three
forms:
Currently, employers covered by electronic submission
requirements are only required to submit the summary data from Form
300A, not the more detailed information on Form 300 and Form
301.
The new rule changes that.
Under the new rule, employers in designated industries with more
than 100 employees must submit Form 300 and Form 301, in addition
to Form 300A, annually using OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application
(ITA). In addition, OSHA will require employers to include their
company name when making electronic submissions. Employers
will need to provide this detailed injury and illness information
for all of calendar year 2023 by March 2, 2024.
The covered industries are listed in a new appendix to the
regulations. The following industries are a selection of the
designated industries in Appendix B to Subpart E of Part
1904:
1121 Cattle Ranching and Farming
1133 Logging
2213 Water, Sewage and Other Systems
2381 Foundation, Structure, and Building Exterior
Contractors
3115 Dairy Product Manufacturing
3117 Seafood Product Preparation and Packaging
3118 Bakeries and Tortilla Manufacturing
3119 Other Food Manufacturing
3261 Plastics Product Manufacturing
3312 Steel Product Manufacturing from Purchased Steel
3323 Architectural and Structural Metals Manufacturing
3325 Hardware Manufacturing
3327 Machine Shops; Turned Product; and Screw, Nut, and Bolt
Manufacturing
4244 Grocery and Related Product Merchant Wholesalers
4413 Automotive Parts, Accessories, and Tire Stores
4441 Building Material and Supplies Dealers
4451 Grocery Stores
4522 Department Stores
4841 General Freight Trucking
4859 Other Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation
4921 Couriers and Express Delivery Services
4931 Warehousing and Storage
5621 Waste Collection
6221 General Medical and Surgical Hospitals
7112 Spectator Sports
7131 Amusement Parks and Arcades
7211 Traveler Accommodation
OSHA will publish much of the data it collects from Form 300 and
Form 301 on its public website, after identifying and removing
information that could reasonably be expected to identify
individuals directly, such as individuals’ names and contact
information. OSHA believes publishing this data “will allow
OSHA, employers, employees, researchers, safety consultants, and
the general public to use the data in ways that will ultimately
result in the reduction of occupational injuries and
illnesses.”
The rule increases the amount of detailed information available
to OSHA such as the injuries and illnesses that employees are
experiencing, the names of injured employees, the mechanisms of
injury, etc. OSHA can use the information in many ways, including
to:
- Decide which employers to inspect.
- Prepare for inspections.
- Target certain industries.
- Predetermine what to scrutinize during an inspection.
- Identify employees who have been injured or ill, as opposed to
randomly asking for employees to be produced for interviews.
Consequently, the new rule increases employers’ exposure to
OSHA citations and penalties.
Employers can and should prepare to comply with the new rule now
to mitigate their risks and exposure. Employers can do the
following:
- Determine whether you are covered by the new rule.
- Review your recordkeeping procedures to ensure you are
accurately completing OSHA Forms 300, 301 and 300A. - Begin to gather and organize Forms 300, 301 and 300A for the
2023 calendar year. - Create an Injury
Tracking Application (ITA) account and a gov
account if you do not already have them. - Determine how you will submit Forms
300, 301 and 300A into ITA. You can manually enter your data,
upload a CSV file to add multiple establishments at the same time,
or transmit data electronically via an API (application programming
interface). - Determine who will submit the Forms
into ITA. Ensure that you become familiar with ITA to facilitate
the submission process. - Prepare a schedule that ensures all Forms 300, 301 and 300A for
calendar year 2023 are submitted before
March 2, 2024. Submitting forms before the due date avoids
potential technical issues that can arise if ITA is overwhelmed by
traffic.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.