Court orders OSHA to make injury data publicly available

Heads up: The injury and illness data you submit to OSHA every year could soon be available for public review.

That’s the upshot of a recent court ruling in favor of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIS), which sued the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in January 2018 after the agency refused its Freedom of Information Act request to release injury information submitted by employers to OSHA between Aug. 1, 2017, and Feb. 6, 2018.

In a recently released decision, a federal court turned down a request by the DOL to have the CIS lawsuit dismissed. The judge didn’t buy the DOL’s argument that the information included in the reports is confidential, noting that employers were told by OSHA that the data could be posted on the agency’s website.

The court also pointed out that the forms must be displayed in the workplace and that employees have the right to review the data. As a result, the information could hardly be classified as confidential, as the government had argued.

That means OSHA is now required to provide the CIS with copies of approximately 237,000 Form 300As submitted to the agency. However, it’s likely that the government will appeal the ruling, so the data might not be released right away.

What it means to you: Your efforts to avoid injuries now hold more importance within your organization. Should the Form 300A data be publicly released, it’s likely that employers with high injury rates will face new scrutiny from employees, the public and investors.

Based on The Center for Investigative Reporting v. Department of Labor.

(From the June 15, 2020, issue of OSHA Compliance News. To download the entire issue for free, please click here.)