Issue link: http://palletcentral.uberflip.com/i/1505351
32 PalletCentral • July-August 2023 palletcentral.com Safety Where do you fit in? How companies of all sizes in high-hazard industries report their employee injuries and illnesses each year has changed. By Adele L. Abrams, Esq., ASP, CMSP NEW OSHA INITIATIVES On Injury Reporting & Warehouse Safety O n the heels of OSHA's release of an ambitious regulatory agenda to finish out the remaining months of this administration, the agency made good on its pledge to finalize a new version of its Electronic Recordkeeping rule, which requires many employers in high-hazard industries to provide their data to the agency annually. Other employers must simply keep their injury/illness logs in the workplace, and the odds of OSHA actually reviewing that information are rather low, but they must be posted for worker review between February 1 and April 30 of each year. e electronic data must be submitted by OSHA by March 2nd of the next year (CY 2023 data will be due March 2, 2024). e original Obama-era 2016 rule required large employers to submit all three mandatory OSHA logs: the Form 300A "Summary," which simply states the numbers of injuries and fatalities for that worksite; the Form 300 (which logs each incident by employee name, title, date of injury, location, description and outcome), and Form 301 (which has more detailed incident information including medical treatment, and employers can use the worker's compensation report in lieu of OSHA's own form). Smaller employers in specified North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) codes were required to submit only the Form 300A. However, the rule was reopened under the Trump administration, and OSHA eliminated any requirement by any employers to submit the Form 300 or Form 301 electronically (the logs still had to be kept by employers, however, and made available to OSHA upon request). Worker groups sued OSHA, seeking to reinstate the "Obama" original rule, and the case was placed on hold after the party shift in the 2020 election. e Biden administration missed several deadlines but iStock/twinsterphoto