Dive Brief:

• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s anti-retaliation record-keeping rules will become effective today. Business groups tried but failed to get a Texas federal judge to order a preliminary injunction against the measure, SHRM reports.
• The rules require employers to tell their workers that they can report workplace accidents and injuries without retaliation. The rules also restrict post-accident drug-testing and workplace safety incentives.
• The court didn’t block the rules because the plaintiffs failed to show how they would experience “irreparable harm” if the rules were enacted. Judge Sam Lindsey said that speculation and fear about what rules might or might not do was not enough grounds for an injunction. 

Dive Insight:

Barring a 12th-hour stay from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, OSHA’s anti-retaliation provisions will be enacted today. 

OSHA saw post-accident drug testing as an invasion of privacy and potentially retaliatory. Many of the concerns of the rule are due to the fact that injury reporting data will be made public, thanks to the new electronic submission guidelines. Industry leaders are concerned that making that information public could risk exposing private information and give the public a skewed view of goings-on within certain companies.