In compliance with Federal OSHA requirements, some California employers will be required to annually submit their injury and illness log information to a federal OSHA database. The first compliance date is December 31, 2018 to submit data from 2017. Beginning in 2019, summary data will be due by March 2 of each calendar year, covering the prior year.
In April 2018, federal OSHA announced that employers in state plan states would be required to comply with this annual disclosure requirement. Cal/OSHA, however, waited until this month to react to the April announcement and declared an emergency for rulemaking purposes. The emergency rulemaking process reduces public discussion of the policy at issue and allows the public a limited 5-day comment period to comment only on the rule’s compliance with the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), that includes necessity, clarity and consistency with state and federal laws. CalChamber and a coalition of employers commented on two provisions of the rule that lack clarity: (1) the compliance date of December 31, 2018; and (2) instructions for providing the information to federal OSHA. Unfortunately, our comments did not prompt any changes to the rule.
The following employers must submit online the Form 300A covering calendar year 2017 by December 31, 2018:
- All employers with 250 or more employees, unless specifically exempted by section 14300.2 of Title 8 of the California Code of Regulations.
- Employers with 20 to 249 employees in the specific industries listed in Appendix H of the emergency regulations.
Instructions to submit the summaries online each year are on federal OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application webpage.
A formal rulemaking period will follow the adoption of the emergency rules, with the adoption of permanent rules within 6 months, with a 6-month extension available. The process to adopt permanent rules includes public notice, public comment and public hearing. The dates for the permanent rules comment period and public hearing will be posted on Cal/OSHA’s proposed regulation page.