Steve Burt
HCR
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires most employers with 10 or more employees to track and report all work-related injuries and illnesses via Forms 300 (Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) and 300A (Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses). To complete Form 300A, employers must summarize all work-related injuries and illnesses reported on Form 300 for the 2019 calendar year, including the total number of cases, the total number of days employees spent away from work or on restriction, and specific injury and illness types.
Employers subject to the OSHA reporting requirements will have until March 2, 2020, to electronically file their 2019 Form 300A injury and illness summaries. Reporting is required for any establishment with 250 or more workers. In addition, reporting is required for establishments with 20 or more workers in certain OSHA-designated industries, including construction, manufacturing, transportation, and healthcare. OSHA no longer requires employers to electronically file their full OSHA 300 Logs along with the OSHA 300A Annual Summary.
Form 300A, “A Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses,” summarizes an establishment’s work-related illnesses and injuries for the previous year and aggregates the number of OSHA-qualifying cases, days away from work, and injury and illness types for a single establishment. Qualifying establishments must electronically file their Form 300As annually through OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application, or the state-equivalent for employers in State Plan states—even if no work-related injuries or illnesses occurred during the year.
According to OSHA regulations, an “establishment” is “a single physical location where business is conducted or where services or industrial operations are performed.” These reporting requirements apply in federal OSHA states and in State Plan states. Remember that State Plan states may adopt stricter reporting requirements than required by OSHA.
OSHA reports that fewer than half of the establishments expected to file reports for 2018 complied with their reporting obligations. Although establishments who fail to file their Form 300 by March 2 open themselves to citation and selection for inspection by OSHA, citations for delinquent reporters in 2018 have been few and proposed fines relatively low.
One possible explanation for the low reporting numbers is the uncertainty surrounding the confidentiality of submitted Form 300As. During the Obama administration, OSHA officials decided the 300A forms would be made public. However, OSHA has since reversed course, stating that it considers the summaries to be confidential.
In addition to the reporting requirements for certain establishments, all establishments with 10 or more employees (except for certain “low-risk” industries) are required to post copies of their Form 300As from February 1 through April 30, 2020, in a workplace location visible to all workers, and to retain the forms for five years.
It is very easy to electronically file the Form 300A via OSHA’s online Injury Tracking Application.
