OSHA Initiates Enforcement Program to Identify Employers Failing to Submit Injury, Illness Data

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has initiated a new enforcement program to identify employers who failed to submit Form 300A data through the agency’s Injury Tracking Application (ITA). OSHA created the injury and illness reporting program in 2016 and it publishes the reported data on its webpage at https://www.osha.gov/Establishment-Specific-Injury-and-Illness-Data.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last year found that more than half of covered employers fail to report injury and illness data as required by the regulation. OSHA’s enforcement program seeks to find companies that have not reported and cite them. In addition, the enforcement initiative is also designed to incentive companies that have not reported to submit their reports.

Under current OSHA regulations in 29 CFR 1904.41, the following establishments must submit an annual summary of workplace injuries and illnesses (OSHA Form 300A):

• Establishments with 250 or more employees that are required to keep OSHA injury and illness records (i.e., are not partially exempt per 29 CFR 1904.2); and
• Establishments with 20—249 employees in certain high-risk industries. The current list of high-risk industries includes printing operations.

Each week, under the enforcement program OSHA matches newly opened inspections against a list of potential non-responders to OSHA’s collection of Calendar Year 2021 Form 300A data through the ITA and reports all matches to the appropriate OSHA area office. If the area office determines that the establishment on the list is the same establishment where the inspection was opened, OSHA will issue citations for failure to submit OSHA Form 300A Summary data.

This new approach takes the burden to identify allegedly non-compliant employers off OSHA inspectors, and arms them with information to issue citations for a failure to report. In addition to identifying non-responders at the establishment level, the agency is also reviewing the 2021 submitted data to identify non-responders at a corporate-wide level so companies with more than one location may receive a larger penalty.

The reporting deadline for calendar year 2021 was March 2, 2022, so the six-month date to issue a citation for non-compliance with the requirements ends on September 2, 2022.

In addition, OSHA proposed a rule on March 30, 2022, to revise the injury and illness reporting requirements for employers. Under the proposed rule, OSHA would maintain the Form 300A data reporting for companies with 20 or more employees, and it would remove the injury/illness reporting requirement for establishments with 250 or more employees that are not in a designated industry.

However, OSHA will require certain establishments in designated industries with 100 or more employees to provide more detailed reports by requiring them to submit information from their Forms 300, 301, and 300A. If the rule were to become final, the two new reporting categories would be:

• Establishments with 100 or more employees in certain designated industries would be required to submit information from OSHA Forms 300, 301, and 300A.
• Establishments with 20 or more employees in certain designated industries would be required to continue submitting Form 300A (Annually Summary) each year.

At this time, printing operations are not included in the list of designated industries with 100 employees that would be required to report detailed information (e.g., OSHA Forms 300, 301, and 300A). However, printing operations would still have to report their Form 300A data if they had more than 20 employees per establishment.

Gary Jones is the Director of Environmental, Health and Safety Affairs at PRINTING United Alliance, the most comprehensive member-based printing and graphic arts association in the United States, comprised of the vast communities which it represents. The Alliance serves industry professionals across market segments with pertinent education, training, workshops, events, research, government and legislative representation, safety, and environmental sustainability guidance, as well as resources from the leading media company in the industry – NAPCO Media. Now a division of PRINTING United Alliance, Idealliance is the global leader in standards training and certification for printing and graphic arts operations across the entire industry supply chain.

In this article, Gary addresses OSHA’s new enforcement program related to workplace injury and illness reporting. More information can be found at Business Excellence-Environmental, Health and Safety or reach out to Gary should you have additional questions specific to how these issues may affect your business: gjones@printing.org.

To become a member of PRINTING United Alliance and learn more about how PRINTING United Alliance subject matter experts can assist your company with services and resources such as those mentioned in this article, please contact the Alliance membership team: 888-385-3588 / membership@printing.org.