California Legislature Proposes a Termination to Email Injury Reporting for Employers
Currently, California employers can report a serious work-related injury, illness, or death via email and telephone. A proposed amendment to the California code of regulations could change that.
Under current law, a California employer must report an employee’s injury, illness, or death at or related to the work location within eight hours of his or her knowledge of the incident. With a proposal from the California legislature, this will not change. What will change? The method with which employer does so.
Email or telephone are two current, acceptable methods for reporting work-related injuries or deaths. However, the state of California and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have expressed requests to eliminate the email report option and provide an online mechanism instead.
Email simply does not provide sufficient or complete information about each work-related incident, reported OSHA and the state of California. It makes their evaluations of the incidents time-consuming and complicated. “Unlike telephone reporting, [email] allows for incomplete accident reports. When an employer reports an injury or fatality by email, it can neglect to provide meaningful information about the workplace incident,” one source expresses.
Section 330(h), title 8, of the California Code of Regulations defines the current code of regulations for reporting these incidents. Should the proposal to the section be accepted, the state legislature would allow continued email reporting until an online mechanism is developed (projected date: January 1, 2020).
For more information, visit the National Law Review.