COMING SUNDAY
Read Sunday’s edition of Journal-News for more details about the impact OSHA’s new rules for reporting work accidents is having on the federal agency’s Cincinnati-area office.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration rolled out new reporting requirements on Jan. 1 for serious on-the-job accidents.
Companies nationwide must now notify OSHA within 24 hours of any amputations, workers hospitalized overnight or loss of an eye.
Previously, employers only had to report all work-related fatalities and hospitalizations of three or more employees, according to the federal government agency.
The Journal-News asked Scott Allen, regional director for public affairs of OSHA in Chicago, for more details. He provided the following written responses.
Q: Why were these recordkeeping changes made?
A: "The changes were made so that OSHA can focus its efforts more effectively to prevent fatalities and serious work-related injuries and illnesses. The final rule will also improve access by employers, employees, researchers and the public to information about workplace safety and health and increase their ability to identify and abate serious hazards."
Q: If one of these non-fatal, but serious injuries are reported, are OSHA staff now required to respond to these scenes?
A: "OSHA has and will continue to respond to reports of workplace safety and health violations — all complaints from employees and their representatives are taken seriously. OSHA can't physically investigate every report; they are and will be working with every workplace that reports to identify and mitigate the causes so it doesn't happen again."
Q: How is that expected to impact the number of accidents OSHA investigates?
A: "By improving access to workplace safety and health information, the new rule will help OSHA to better focus its efforts on industries with high-rates of fatalities and serious work-related injuries and illnesses, thereby increasing the agency's ability to identify and abate serious hazards, and decrease the number of worker injuries and fatalities."
Q: Were there any funding or staffing increases for OSHA as a result of these new reporting requirements?
A: "No, but the new rule will allow OSHA to will significantly enhance the agency's ability to target our resources to save lives and prevent further injury and illness. This new data will enable the agency to identify the workplaces where workers are at the greatest risk and target our compliance assistance and enforcement resources accordingly."
Q: And how were companies held accountable for hospitalizations, amputations, loss of eye before — if they didn’t report these accidents to OSHA before, did they report them to anyone?
A: "Enforcement measures and penalties are dependent on the OSHA Act standards violated and other factors such as severity, prior violations, negligence, etc. Some companies or industries, depending on their classification (under SIC or NAICS) may not have been required to report workplace injuries or fatalities. In many of those cases, OSHA relies on complaints or referrals from employees or targeted inspections."
“Additional information on reporting can be found here: https://www.osha.gov/recordkeeping2014/index.html.”
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