This article is taken from the Feb. 19 National Grain and Feed Association newsletter.
House Democrats introduced legislation on Feb. 18 intended to increase the Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s (OSHA) enforcement of workplace injury-and-illness recordkeeping rules.
The “Accurate Workplace Injury and Illness Record Restoration Act” would reinstate OSHA’s authority to issue citations for “continuing violations” of injury-and-illness recordkeeping requirements.
It also would direct OSHA to reissue a rule “that will ensure the agency can cite recordkeeping violations when there are continuing violations.”
OSHA citations for employer recordkeeping violations have decreased significantly since 2012, when a federal court decision limited OSHA’s ability to cite continuing recordkeeping violations to six months from the date the violation occurred.
The bill – introduced by House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott, D-Va., Workforce Protections Subcommittee Chair Alma Adams, D-N.C., Veterans Affairs Committee Chair Mark Takano, D-Calif., and Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Ct. – includes the following provisions:
- Amends the six-month statute of limitations in the Occupational Safety and Health Act so that the six-month clock starts running on the date OSHA identifies a continuing violation, instead of on the first date that the violation occurs. National Grain and Feed Association 5 Return to contents February 19, 2020.
- Reverses the 2017 Congressional Review Act Resolution of Disapproval, which repealed an OSHA regulation that would have restored federal authority to issue citations for continuing violations occurring up to five-and-a-half years from the initial violation.
- Requires OSHA to issue a new regulation clarifying that an employer’s obligation to make and maintain accurate injury and illness records is a continuing obligation.
The legislation coincides with the release of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, which found that more than half of the employers required to report injury-and-illness data to OSHA on an annual basis have failed to do so over the last three years.
GAO – the investigative arm of Congress – said OSHA does not have sufficient procedures in place to encourage compliance with the recordkeeping rule or to penalize non-compliance.
According to the report, OSHA officials told GAO that they identified nearly 220,000 employers in 2019 who may not have reported their data and mailed reminder postcards to about 27,000 of them. OSHA also cited 255 employers for failure to report their data from mid-December 2017 through September 2019 after OSHA conducted on-site inspections.
“OSHA uses the summary injury and illness data to target high-risk establishments for certain comprehensive inspections,” the GAO report stated.
“Because OSHA has not evaluated its procedures, it does not know the extent to which its efforts may be improving injury and illness reporting or what other efforts it should undertake.
Absent more complete information, OSHA is at risk for not achieving its objective of targeting inspections to establishments with the highest injury-and-illness rates.”