Article Contributed By Mark Adams
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is issuing a proposed rule that if adopted would change how OSHA Forms 300, 300A and 301 are developed by many companies.
Since 2018, companies with 250 or more employees (or companies 20 or more employees but less than 250 employees but whose industry has otherwise been designated by OSHA) have been required to submit their OSHA 300A Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses as well as their corresponding OSHA log 300 and 301 forms electronically to OSHA.
However, OSHA is now proposing to lower this threshold bar further that would do the following:
- Require establishments with 100 or more employees in certain high-hazard industries to electronically submit information from their OSHA Forms 300, 301 and 300A to OSHA once a year.
- Update the classification system used to determine the list of industries covered by the electronic submission requirement.
- Remove the current requirement for establishments with 250 or more employees not in a designated industry to electronically submit information from their Form 300A to OSHA annually.
- Require establishments to include their company name when making electronic submissions to OSHA.
According to the proposed rule, OSHA also intends to post the collected establishment-specific, case-specific injury and information online including the following:
- Form 300 (the Log)—All collected data fields on the 300 Log will generally be made available on OSHA’s website. OSHA is proposing to collect all of the fields except employee name (column B).
- Form 301 (Incident Report)—All collected data fields on the right-hand side of the form (Fields 10 through 18) will generally be made available.
However, OSHA does recognize the privacy concerns behind this endeavor. Specifically, as stated in the proposed rule introduction: “the agency will seek to minimize the possibility that worker information, such as name and contact information, will be released, through multiple efforts, including limiting the worker information collected, designing the collection system to provide extra protections for some of the information that employers would be required to submit under the proposal, withholding certain fields from public disclosure, and using automated software to identify and remove information that reasonably identifies individuals directly.”
Comments are the changes are being considered until May 31, 2022 and can be submitted by clicking here.