OSHA is coming down hard on employers that fail to report injuries

Heads up: OSHA won’t hesitate to come down hard on employers that fail to alert the agency to a workplace injury in a timely manner.

That’s your takeaway from the safety agency’s recently released annual performance report. According to the report, OSHA issued 19% more citations to companies that didn’t report injuries in 2019 than it did in 2016 – to 909 from 764.

Part of the reason for the increase in the number of citations was that OSHA received significantly more injury alerts in 2019 than it did three years earlier. The report said there were 12,245 injury notifications in 2019, compared to 10,816 in 2016, a jump of 13%.

The performance report also identified the agency’s enforcement priorities for this year and beyond.

Pointing out that fall protection continues to be its most-cited violation, OSHA revealed that it’ll conduct more inspections focused on fall dangers. The report also said OSHA will jump-start its efforts to provide compliance assistance to employers with workers exposed to fall-protection hazards.

OSHA also said that it’ll ratchet up its enforcement focus on trenching and excavation dangers.

(From the Feb. 24,2020, issue of OSHA Compliance News)