Employers’ Injury and Illness Information Becomes Public and Expanded Protections for Employees that Report Injuries and Illnesses On May 11, 2016, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued its much anticipated final rule on recordkeeping and reporting. The final rule requires employers in certain industries to electronically submit information about workplace injuries and illnesses to OSHA. OSHA will post the electronically submitted information, according to the final rule, on its public website. The final…

Hey employer, remember that workplace injury that you reported to OSHA a few months ago? You remember, right? The one where after you gave OSHA information about the workplace injury, like the root cause of the incident, and a few days later OSHA informed you that it considered the matter “closed.” Well guess what? OSHA is now at the door of your facility seeking to do a “monitoring inspection” related to the workplace injury that…

Employers, do your safety policies and procedures require employees to immediately report their injuries? Do you discipline employees for failing to follow your safety policies and procedures? Most employers with safety programs in place probably answered “yes” to both of those questions and probably believe that both of those propositions are central to managing their safety programs. Standing on their own, each of those propositions is fine. However, applying the discipline policy to an instance…