OSHA Tightens Incident-Reporting Rules

If you have a fatality or a serious injury that requires the hospitalization of employees, new OSHA rules will require employers to file detailed reports within eight hours for a fatality and 24 hours for serious nonfatal injuries.

The new rules, announced earlier this month, will take effect on Jan. 1, 2015.

“We can and we must do more to keep America’s workers safe and healthy,” Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez said in a statement quoted in an online news article. “Workplace injuries and fatalities are absolutely preventable, and these new requirements will help OSHA focus its resources and hold employers accountable for preventing them.”

At a news conference on Sept. 11, OSHA chief David Michaels also said that these incident reports would be posted on the agency's website and made accessible to the public. Michaels acknowledged that this plan to post the reports wasn't mentioned during a three-year rulemaking process, according to news reports. However, he noted that summary reports of fatalities and catastrophic incidents and the names of the companies involved are already posted on the site. "We're a public agency," he said. "Our reports are public." 

Companies of all sizes must file the reports with the Dept. of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The 24-hour reporting period includes work-related hospitalizations, amputations or losses of an eye, according to OSHA. Previously, OSHA rules required such reports only if three or more employees were killed or hospitalized as a result of a workplace incident.

The new rule follows the recent release of a Bureau of Labor Statistics report that said 4,405 employees were killed on the job in 2013. Click here for details.