In Case Of Workplace Accident, Increase OSHA Reporting

Howard Mavity was quoted in the September 16, 2014 Corporate Counsel article "In Case of Workplace Accident, Increase OSHA Reporting."

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued a set of revised recordkeeping rules that ask employers to provide more information about health and safety incidents in the workplace. OSHA believes the rule changes, which came out last week, will help identify trouble spots at companies where there could be danger to more workers.

Before the updated rules, OSHA only asked that covered employers notify the agency when workplace fatalities occurred, or when three or more employees are hospitalized for work-related reasons. After the newly announced rules kick in—they will become official at the start of 2015—covered companies still will have to notify OSHA of work-related fatalities, but also will have to let them know when only one employee is hospitalized and when an employee experiences amputation or the loss of an eye on the job. Fatalities will have to be reported within eight hours of finding out about the death; hospitalization, amputation or eye loss will have to be reported within 24 hours.

These new standards are likely to have an impact. “It’s a huge deal,” Howard told CorpCounsel.com. ”The only reason it’s not going to be a larger deal is that OSHA truly doesn’t have the manpower to start doing a whole bunch of additional investigations.” While OSHA investigates almost all of the incidents that are reported, once these rules go into place, Howard believes, the resulting uptick in reports will make it difficult to investigate 100 percent of them.

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