Dive Brief:
- Employers have an extra 14 days to file illness and injury electronic forms under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA's) recordkeeping rule, known as the Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses regulation, according to law firm Jackson Lewis. The new deadline is Dec. 15, 2017, the firm says.
- OSHA initially moved the submission deadline from July 1, 2017, to Dec. 1, 2017, to give employers time to become familiar with its portal, called the Injury Tracking Application or ITA.
- The agency is reviewing the regulation and intends to reconsider or revise provisions of the rule in 2018, Jackson Lewis says. Updates to the provision will be published in the Federal Register next year.
Dive Insight:
OSHA's repeated delays on the rule raises questions about what the final rule will look like. Like most federal regulations, the recordkeeping rule has a received a fair amount of pushback from industry groups. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHA) questioned the rule's constitutionality earlier in the year by filing a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. The association argued that requiring employers to submit recordkeeping logs online and revealing the information publicly violates employers' First and Fifth amendment rights.
Industry groups also pushed back on the "anti-retaliation" measure, which would limit post-accident drug and alcohol testing. Under the previous administration, OSHA had argued that the provision would make workers more likely to report illnesses and injuries if they don't have to fear being punished for doing so.
OSHA has delayed or amended several rules since the administration change, including the beryllium exposure rule, and more could be on the way as the the White House has instructed agencies to limit new regulations.
