OSHA rule on electronic injury logs delayed

The Labor Department on Wednesday suspended a rule from President Barack Obama’s administration requiring that companies electronically report their injury and illness records, a move that essentially keeps these records from being publicly disclosed for the immediate future.

Several business groups, including the Associated Builders & Contractors, Association of General Contractors, and National Association of Home Builders, had challenged the 2016 Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulation in court and lobbied the administration to jettison it on the grounds that it could unfairly damage the reputations of some of their members.

Companies have had to maintain worker injury and illness logs since 1971, and between 1995 and 2012, OSHA had required roughly 180,000 establishments in high-hazard industries such as manufacturing and nursing homes to submit the summary data by mail. But the program cost $2 million a year to run, and officials decided to expand the requirement and transition it to an electronic system instead.

The rule, which covered nearly 441,000 workplaces, took effect Jan. 1 and employers were obligated to send in their summary data by July 1. But OSHA never launched the website for companies to submit the information, and it posted language Wednesday with an existing fact sheet saying it “is not accepting electronic submissions of injury and illness logs at this time, and intends to propose extending the July 1, 2017 date by which certain employers are required to submit the information” to the agency.

OSHA spokesman Mandy Kraft said in an email the agency delayed the rule to address employers’ “concerns about meeting their reporting obligations” in time.

“Sixteen years’ worth of that data is on the Web right now, but no one complains about it,” said David Michaels, who headed OSHA from December 2009 to January 2017 and is now a professor at George Washington University’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. “We know by making injury rates public some employers will work to prevent injuries because they want to be seen as safe employers and they want be seen as good employers.”

But Randy Johnson, senior vice president for labor, immigration, and employee benefits at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said companies were concerned that information “could be used by unions and others to smear companies.”

Peg Seminario, the AFLCIO’s director of safety and health, said that the administration’s action not only limits what the public can learn about work sites’ safety records, but what guidance inspectors have when they decide which establishments to target.

“Without this, OSHA is flying blind. because they have no information about workplaces across the country,” Seminario said.