Report your Workplace Injuries to OSHA Before March 2
The deadline for electronically reporting your OSHA Form 300A data for the 2019 year is fast approaching.
Collection of data for workplace injury reports has already begun, and there’s just under a week left to report your 2019 workplace injury data electronically.
Reporting is required for any establishment with 250 or more workers and for establishments with 20 or more workers in certain OSHA-designated industries including construction, manufacturing, transportation, and healthcare.
In case you need a refresher, Form 300A, “A Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses,” basically summarizes an establishment’s work-related injuries and illnesses for accurate recordkeeping and data analysis purposes. The data is used to aggregate the number of OSHA-qualifying cases, days away from work and injury and illness types for a single establishment, according to Thompson Coburn LLP.
Use OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application, or the state-equivalent for employers in State Plan states—even if no work-related injuries or illnesses occurred during the year.
OSHA’s definition of an “establishment” is a “single physical location where business is conducted or where services or industrial operations are performed.”
Submitting Form 300A by March 2 does open up establishments to review and potential inspection/citation by OSHA. However, OSHA reports that fewer than half of the establishments expected to file reports for 2018 actually complied with their reporting obligations. Better to remain compliant and avoid compliance fees than not comply with OSHA obligations and face even more consequences down the line.
Thompson Coburn LLP notes that one potential reason for recent reporting numbers is the uncertainty surrounding the confidentiality of the forms. The Obama administration had OSHA make the forms public, but OSHA has since reversed course and considers them confidential. OSHA has rejected many Freedom of Information Act requests made by worker advocate and health research groups who seek the release of information for data analysis and study.
Remember, however, that for establishments with 10 or more employees (except “low-risk” industries), employers are required to post copies of their Form 300As in the workplace where it will be visible to all workers from February 1 through April 30,2020 and retain the forms for five years.