The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which had issued a rule requiring the electronic posting of such information for most employers in May 2016, announced that the filing deadline will be postponed for an undetermined period of time. OSHA has announced that it “intends to propose extending the July 1, 2017 deadline” for the first phase of its rule requiring the electronic submission of injury and illness records. The July deadline was for employers in certain categories to electronically submit their OSHA 300A annual summaries.
OSHA had previously set a deadline of July 1, 2017, for employers to file their injury and illness forms online. With the filing deadline only a month and a half away, OSHA has now delayed the filing. A new deadline has not been announced and OSHA has not offered a formal reason for the postponement. The Recordkeeping Rule, which covered nearly 441,000 workplaces, took effect January 1, 2017 and employers were obligated to send in their summary data for 2016 by July 1, 2017. But OSHA has yet to launch the website for companies to submit the information, and it posted language Wednesday (May 17th) 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.
The electronic recordkeeping rule would not have created new obligations in terms of reporting. Those employers covered by the new rule would have been asked to simply use data from their OSHA Forms 300, 300A, and 301 when using the electronic reporting method. One big change was that OSHA was prepared to electronically post injury and illness data on its website from all workplaces with 20 or more employees and for those in certain high-risk industries, making the information publicly available for the first time ever for consumption by unions, plaintiffs’ attorneys, and others. Submission was to be phased in based on employer establishment size and industry.
Information provided by Stephen A. Burt, B.S., M.F.A.
Chair, Government Affairs Committee