OSHA’s Assistant Secretary of Labor for
Occupational Safety & Health Dr. David Michaels announced a new OSHA rule
entitled “Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses” which will
require 478,000 U. S. employers of 20 or more employees to electronically
report illness and injury rates to the agency once annually, or quarterly for
employers with over 250 workers. OSHA plans to eventually post the data on
line, creating a public, facility specific database of workplace injury
information for regulators, workers, competitors and prospective employees.
According
to Michaels, such a database would have several advantages:
· It will allow
employers to benchmark their injury rates against others in the same industry
and against worldwide industrial injury data generally.
· It will allow
government agencies, owners and developers hiring contractors to compare and
contrast safety statistics among bidders for their work.
· It will allow
contractors with exemplary safety records to have bragging rights over their
competitors.
· It will allow
companies with good safety records to become “employers of choice” among people
looking for work within their industries.
· It will push
employers to find and remedy safety and health hazards before illness or injury
occurs.
Michaels admits that
OSHA and its various state government counterparts taken together have only
enough staff to inspect each of the nation’s workplaces subject to OSHA
jurisdiction only once every 100 years. Creation of the database should enable
regulators to focus enforcement efforts on high risk industries and facilities.
The
National Association of Manufacturers has already announced its opposition to
the proposed rule. NAM Director of Labor and Employment Policy Amanda Wood
denies that publishing company specific and facility specific injury statistics
would “further the end game to achieve safer workplaces.”
“Discussing
specific injury and illness data could lead to unfair characterizations of
businesses by people who just see a statistic and don’t know the circumstances
behind it,” Wood said. “We need best practices, not additional regulations, at
this time.”
OSHA
has scheduled a public hearing on the proposed rule in Washington, D. C.
January 9, 2014, and public comment on the rule closes February 6.
