The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration will stop requiring covered establishments with 250 or more employees to upload detailed injury logs and incident reports each year. Its final rule, published January 25, 2019, takes effect February 25. Annual Form 300A summaries still have to be sent, and businesses must still keep their underlying injury records. [S1][S2]

Form 300 logs work-related injuries and illnesses; Form 301 records details of individual cases. Form 300A summarizes the year. OSHA says the repeal changes neither the duty to complete and retain records nor the criteria for recording an injury. Inspectors can still obtain the detailed forms. Nor was the annual detailed upload an established routine: OSHA says it had never enforced that requirement or received the submissions anticipated by the earlier rule. [S1][S2]

Smaller establishments do not get a new exemption from the summary filing. Those with 20 to 249 employees in designated industries must continue submitting Form 300A electronically. The thresholds apply to an establishment and look at whether it reached the relevant size at any time during the previous calendar year. Part-time, seasonal and temporary employees count too. In the 250-or-more category, the establishment must also be subject to OSHA’s recordkeeping requirements. A company-wide headcount alone does not answer which locations have to file. [S1]

The immediate deadline remains March 2, 2019, for the 2018 Form 300A data. OSHA’s January 24 announcement says collection began January 2. The revised regulation permits a corporate office to submit for establishments it owns or controls, but says routine filers will not receive an individual notification from OSHA. Centralizing the upload therefore does not eliminate the need to identify which locations must report. [S1][S2]

One new field comes later: the Employer Identification Number, or EIN, used by each reporting establishment. The final rule schedules that requirement for the March 2, 2020 submission of 2019 summary data, not the March 2019 filing of 2018 data. It also conditions compliance with its information collections on a separate Federal Register announcement of Office of Management and Budget approval. The February effective date is not a deadline to add an EIN to the imminent 2018-data submission. [S1]

Source documents

  1. Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses — final rule, 84 FR 380https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-01-25/html/2019-00101.htm
  2. U.S. Department of Labor Issues Final Rule to Protect Privacy of Workershttps://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDOL/bulletins/22a6fcb