Tom Barnes
Compliance Specialists, Inc.

Many EASA service centers in the U.S. are facing yet another deadline for reporting information electronically to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); the deadline is December 1, 2017, for reporting injuries and illnesses. Note, however, that some of the “establishments” (defined below) will not be required to report under these new rules yet. As this is a federal regulation and 25 states have their own state OSHA programs, you may not have to report based upon whether your specific state has adopted these new rules yet. At the time of this report, the following states have not yet adopted these rules:

• California
• Maryland
• Montana
• Utah
• Wyoming
  (Please note that these states will be required to adopt these federal rules, so your exemption may not last long.)

If you have establishments in any of these above listed states, it is recommended that you determine if your state plans to adopt these rules prior to the December 1, 2017, deadline. Finally, before we get into what must be reported, let’s try to clear up who must report. Under the current rules, if your “establishment” has 20 or more employees, reporting will be required. OSHA defines as an establishment as follows:

An establishment is defined as a single physical location where business is conducted or where services or industrial operations are performed.

So, if your organization has multiple physical locations, you will treat each one as a separate establishment. Note: If you have multiple businesses at the same physical location and you can clearly demonstrate they are separate and different in product and or services, then it may be possible to treat these as separate locations. The second qualifier you must be aware of is how you count or establish the number of employees at the facility. While many regulations or incident rates are based off of “full-time equivalent employees,” the determination of employees for this reporting regulation differs as OSHA requires you to count as follows:

“You need to determine the establishment's peak employment during the last calendar year. Each individual employed in the establishment at any time during the calendar year counts as one employee, including full-time, part-time, seasonal, and/or temporary workers.”

If you have determined that at your peak employment time you never had 20 or more employees for a physical location, then you are done and will just need to continue tracking injuries using the OSHA 300, 300A and 301 forms. If you determined that you have 20 or more employees, you will need to report the data from your 2016 OSHA 300A log electronically to OSHA by December 1, 2017. To do so, there are three ways to submit this data, and they include the following:

• Web form (manual submission)
• Batch file through a CSV file (form and format information will be announced in November)
• Electronic transmission via application program interface (API)
• Note that OSHA’s injury tacking application (ITA) is available through the ITA launch page

Most EASA members will most likely choose the manual submission which will require you to go to the OSHA web page at https://www.osha.gov/injuryreporting .  You will then hit the Launch ITA button which will start you on the process of setting up an account and completing the required reporting due by December 1st.

Now for 2018 and beyond

While all establishments with 20 or more employees will be subject to the same reporting requirements in 2017, in 2018 there will be requirements for those establishments who have 20-249 employees and separate requirements for those with 250 employees or more. They are as follows:

We hope you find this information helpful and at least somewhat easy to follow.  We will make all attempts to keep you updated if anything regarding these requirements change. We appreciate your membership. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or need for clarification.