The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has adopted a controversial new rule requiring covered employers to provide injury and illness reports to the agency electronically in order to facilitate posting the data online. Although OSHA claims that it plans to scrub the data before posting in order to remove any private information that will identify individual employees, questions have been raised that the rule may compromise not only the confidentiality of private employee data, including medical information, but company-confidential business information as well.
According to OSHA, the new rule is designed to “nudge” employers into devoting more resources to preventing workplace injuries and illnesses, even as the agency acknowledges that “the recording or reporting of a work-related injury, illness, or fatality does not mean that an employer or employee was at fault [or] that an OSHA rule has been violated ….”
The new rule also adds to pre-existing employee protections against retaliation for reporting workplace injuries and illnesses, and allows OSHA to prosecute an employer for unlawful retaliation without first receiving an employee complaint, with workplace safety rules, post-accident drug testing, and safety incentive programs subject to particular scrutiny by the agency.
The text of the new rule, published in the Federal Register on May 12, 2016, is available here. An OSHA-created web page on the new rule, including frequently asked questions, is available here.
Members of the Equal Employment Advisory Council (EEAC) can read more here.