New OSHA Reporting Requirement
“OSHA will now receive crucial reports of fatalities and severe work-related injuries and illnesses that will significantly enhance the agency’s ability to target our resources to save lives and prevent further injury and illness. This new data will enable the agency to identify the workplaces where workers are at the greatest risk and target our compliance assistance and enforcement resources accordingly.”
— Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, Dr. David Michaels
WASHINGTON–The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced on September 11, 2014 a final rule requiring employers to notify OSHA when an employee is killed on the job or suffers a work-related hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye. The rule, which also updates the list of employers partially exempt from OSHA record-keeping requirements, will go into effect on January 1, 2015, for workplaces under federal OSHA jurisdiction.
The announcement follows preliminary results from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2013 National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries.
Under the revised rule, employers will be required to notify OSHA of work-related fatalities within 8 hours, and work-related in-patient hospitalizations, amputations, or losses of an eye within 24 hours. Previously OSHA’s regulations required an employer to report only work-related fatalities and in-patient hospitalizations of three or more employees. Reporting single hospitalizations, amputations or loss of an eye was not required under the previous rule.
All employers covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Act, even those who are exempt from maintaining injury and illness records, are required to comply with OSHA’s new sever injury and illness reporting requirements. To assist employers in fulfilling these requirements, OSHA is developing a Web portal for employers to report incidents electronically, in addition to the phone reporting options.
For more information about this new rule, visit OSHA’s website.
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