The United States Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has issued a final rule eliminating the requirement that establishments with 250 or more employees must electronically submit information from OSHA Form 300A (Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) and OSHA Form 301 (Injury and Illness Incident Report) to OSHA this year. The administration eliminated this requirement to protect worker privacy. Companies are still required to electronically submit information from OSHA Form 300A (Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses).

OSHA says that by eliminating routine collection of information that may be sensitive (descriptions of injuries and body parts affected), they are avoiding the risk that the information could be disclosed publicly under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The rule will protect personally identifiable data that could be re-identified as a particular worker by removing the requirement that employers submit Forms 300 and 301. Employers will still have to maintain these forms on-site and OSHA will still have access to them as needed through inspections and enforcement actions.

This will also allow OSHA to focus more resources on initiatives that have proven useful rather than collecting information from Forms 300 and 301 that have not proven their value for OSHA’s enforcement and compliance assistance. They can focus on the continued use of information from severe injury reports that help target areas of concern and seeking to utilize the large volume of data they have from Form 300A.

The agency is also going to amend recordkeeping regulations to require covered employers to electronically submit their Employer Identification Number with their information from Form 300A. This will make the data more useful for OSHA and BLS and could reduce duplicative reporting burdens on employers in the future. Collection of Calendar Year 2018 information from the OSHA Form 300A began on January 2, 2019 and the deadline for electronic submissions is March 2, 2019.

Read the news release from OSHA.