OSHA to publish details of workplace injuries under new reporting rules

The new year will bring new transparency to workplace safety issues. An Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule going into effect Monday will require about 50,000 employers to beef up their reporting of workplace incidents to OSHA. The details will be published on the agency’s website.

It’s the latest move to increase disclosure and public accountability for workplace safety as the small federal agency grapples with ongoing budget uncertainties.

The new rule applies to companies with 100 or more employees in industries with hazardous jobs.

“Food production, manufacturing, health care. Basically, those jobs that have been shown in the past to be more dangerous,” said Jordan Barab, an OSHA official in the Barack Obama administration.

He said employers will have to report the details of basically any injury that requires more than first aid, something they were already supposed to be doing, but only for their internal records.

“What’s different now is that this information is being sent into OSHA and then put on its web page,” Barab said. “Previously, OSHA only had access to that information when OSHA went and actually physically inspected a workplace.”

Which doesn’t happen that often. OSHA and state agencies it partners with have nearly 2,000 inspectors to cover about 8 million work sites. An AFL-CIO report estimated it would take the agency 190 years to inspect all of them. 

So OSHA has to use its limited enforcement resources wisely, said Matthew Johnson, a professor of public policy and economics at Duke.

“It’s really kind of wild that OSHA often flies blind, meaning that OSHA, up until very recently, just hasn’t had information about what are the workplaces that are actually hazardous,” he said.

Since 2016 the agency has required larger employers to report a one-page summary of workplace incidents. Now more companies will have to report in greater detail about conditions that led to an injury.

“With greater disclosure of information comes more scrutiny,” said Gina Fonte, a partner at the Holland & Knight law firm who helps businesses with OSHA compliance. “Certainly, there’s going to be some additional administrative burden and cost to the employer to have to comply with this,” she said.

But she said the data could also potentially help companies see where they stand compared to competitors, recognize patterns and make changes — before an OSHA inspector shows up at their door.