Today’s post was shared by the U.S. Labor Department and comes from blog.dol.gov It was written by Dr. David Michaels, who is the assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health.
Although there has been some social-media coverage, this has been my first opportunity to read this particular summary. By clicking through to the OSHA report (where it says “we published a report of our evaluation”) and reading the eight-page document titled “Year One of OSHA’s Severe Injury Reporting Program: An Impact Evaluation” a person will gain some really helpful perspective and context for determining how effective this change in reporting “severe work-related injuries, including 7,363 hospitalizations and 2,644 amputations,” according to the report itself, was.
The graphic that breaks down hospitalizations, and the graphic in the larger report that breaks down amputations, are really interesting reading just by themselves.
“Our two main goals for the new reporting requirement were to engage more employers in identifying and eliminating serious hazards themselves, and to allow us to better target our enforcement and compliance assistance efforts to places where workers are most at risk. After reviewing the field reports and associated data, we are confident that both goals are being met,” Michaels said in the blog post.
He also writes about how OSHA is now “more likely to cite for non-reporting, and we have increase the maximum penalty for not reporting a severe injury from $2,000 to $7,000.”
Although lawyers often use the results of an OSHA investigation to help a client’s case, an injured worker frequently has a workers’ compensation case whether there is an OSHA investigation or not. So please contact an experienced workers’ compensation lawyer to talk over the details of the situation that a loved one or you are in regarding a work injury or death. Have a safe, productive day.
In January 2015, we started requiring employers to report any work-related severe injury – such as an amputation or an injury requiring hospitalization – within 24 hours. In the first year, we received 10,388 reports, or nearly 30 a day. Each report told the story of a man or woman who went to work one day and experienced a traumatic event, sometimes with permanent consequences to themselves and their families. But the reports also created opportunities for OSHA to engage with employers in ways we had never done before, and to ensure that changes were made to prevent similar incidents from happening to others.
We learned things that surprised us, encouraged us and sometimes disappointed us. Today, we published a report of our evaluation that features stories from our offices around the country and reflects on lessons learned in the first year. Our two main goals for the new reporting requirement were to engage more employers in identifying and eliminating serious hazards themselves, and to allow us to better target our enforcement and compliance assistance efforts to places where workers are most at risk. After reviewing the field reports and associated data, we are confident that both goals are being met. A few examples explain how:
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