OSHA Injury/Illness Electronic Reporting Rule Delayed Until December

Last week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) delayed its rule requiring businesses to electronically report injury and illnesses, or rather data displayed on individual facilities’ OSHA 300A form, to OSHA. The rule, slated to go into effect January 1, 2017 and later delayed until July 1, 2017 has now been delayed until December 1, 2017. However, OSHA has indicated that the website to be used for the electronic reporting will be available for access starting August 1, 2017. In addition to announcing the delay, OSHA also indicated that it will subsequently request comments from stakeholders about a "proposal to reconsider, revise, or remove other provisions of the prior final rule." The timing of the subsequent notice is unknown; however, NRMCA welcomes these developments and plans to submit comments supporting the rule’s delay and full repeal.

As background, these requirements are the product of regulations finalized on May 12, 2016 that imposed new requirements on companies filling out and posting their 300A forms at their respective workplaces. The new rule, known as the "Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses" rule, also requires companies establish new anti-retaliation programs and applies to company facilities with 20-249 employees to originally submit their OSHA 2016 Form 300A by July 1, 2017, and their 2017 Form 300A by July 1, 2018; and then beginning in 2019 and every year thereafter, the information would be submitted by March 2.