OSHA's Recordkeeping Rule, August 1999
The issue
OSHA intends to issue a new rule that will go into effect January 1, 2000, modifying
its Occupational Injury and Illness Recording and Reporting Requirements to the
detriment of small business.
Why it's important
OSHA's current "recordkeeping" rule is paperwork intensive, with employers required
to keep and maintain a log (the OSHA 200 form) of injuries and illnesses, and it
is the source for a disproportionate number of citations. The new recordkeeping
rule would replace the OSHA 200 form with a reconfigured format (and new definitions)
that OSHA claims would be simpler and more efficient, but industry analysts believe
would be much worse than the current rule. To summarize, the proposed recordkeeping
rule contains ambiguous language and would impose even more cumbersome paperwork
on employers.
Specific new changes (burdens) for roofing contractors would include:
- Definitions of injuries and illnesses, such as that for muskuloskeletal disorders
(i.e. aches and pains), that are so broad that virtually everything, no matter how
minor, would have to be recorded.
- Requiring that an employer record an injury that originally occurred outside the
employer's workplace.
- Requiring subcontractors to provide injury and illness records to general contractors.
- Requiring that an employer make available to an employee, former employees, or employee
representatives all OSHA Injury and Illness Incident Records (proposed form 301).
The Chief Counsel for Advocacy, Small Business Administration, raised numerous concerns
about the recordkeeping rule in comments submitted to OSHA on May 1, 1996. Here
are just two:
This proposed rulemaking is a comprehensive document that amends the recordkeeping
requirements for business, changes the exemption criteria, alters the definition
of key terms, and subjects businesses to new mandates for releasing information…
The methodology for determining an employer's size seems to be changed from no more
than ten employees at any time during the preceding calendar year to a cumulative
total of employees in the entire previous year. Industries that have a fluid workforce,
e.g. retail, restaurants, construction, etc., would be unduly burdened if the proposed
methodology is applied.
NRCA's position
NRCA is opposed to OSHA's recordkeeping rule because it would create more subjectively
enforced compliance requirements with excessive paperwork, but would not establish
a proportional increase in employee safety.
The other side
Organized labor and OSHA believe that employers habitually "underrecord" and "underreport"
employee injuries and illnesses, making necessary OSHA's new recordkeeping rule.
(August 1999)