OSHA proposes annual electronic illness, injury reporting for aftermarket

Automotive parts retailers and tire stores are among a number of business sectors that would have to electronically report illness and injury data to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) if a new proposed rule becomes final. Those companies would have to send a copy of Form 300A (Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) to OSHA or OSHA's designee on an annual basis.

Aftermarket companies are among the 750,000 employers with approximately 1.5 million locations that must complete paper forms each year if they have more than 11 employees. Those forms are only obtained by OSHA in the case of an inspection. There are three OSHA forms that come into play: Form 301 (Injury and Illness Incident Report) for each injury and illness at a covered establishment; Form 300 (Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) is a compilation of all those injuries and illness and Form 300A, the summary form.

The OSHA proposed rule would require companies with more than 250 employees to electronically submit Forms 300 and 301 quarterly. Aftermarket companies would be excluded because they rarely have that many employees. But because automotive aftermarket retailers are in a sector with a relatively high illness/injury profile, they fall into a group of sectors where companies with more than 20 employees would have to meet a less onerous electronic reporting requirement: sending the Form 300A annually.

The automotive sector is included in this new "20 employee-and-over" electronic reporting program because it is one of a number of sectors with a higher-than-normal illness and injury rate. That is based on 2009 statistics reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Currently, OSHA gets direct access to those forms only if the company is subject to an inspection. The agency is clearly concerned that requiring companies to turn over these forms outside an inspection might allow the business community to complain about a violation of the Fourth Constitutional Amendment, which protects against search and seizure of private property.

Federal courts have ruled that a requirement to turn over corporate records is a violation only when a person or company has a “legitimate expectation of privacy” in the object of the search or seizure. Legal language aside, the Fourth Amendment has come into play in a couple of cases where OSHA inspectors demanded records, and it could be an issue in this rulemaking.

Outside of the situation where an OSHA inspector demands Forms 300, 301 or 300A, the agency can obtain a limited number of 300As via its OSHA Data Initiative (ODI). That ropes in about 80,000 workplaces that must submit select data in paper form from Form 300A once every three years, if they qualify as a high-injury workplace. That affects about 1 percent of all companies. However, because the ODI collects only summary data, it does not enable OSHA to identify specific hazards or problems in establishments. In addition, the data are not timely.

That skimpy information is then used by OSHA in each year's Site-Specific Targeting Program. One problem is that the 80,000 establishments in each year's ODI is not a statistically representative sample either of establishments eligible to be included in the ODI or of establishments overall. And even that unrepresentative sample is one year old by the time the agency receives it. So when it finally makes its targeting decisions, the base data are two or three years old.    

The OSHA does get a slightly larger data drop from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which collects data from Form 300A and 300 annually from a scientifically selected probability sample of about 230,000 establishments, covering nearly all private-sector industries, as well as state and local government. That data is then used in the BLS Statistics Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII). It is the latest version of that data that put the automotive aftermarket in the crosshairs of the OSHA for the purposes of this new proposed rule, and its singling out of sectors with fewer than 250 employees but more than 20.

Subscribe to Aftermarket Business World and receive articles like this every month….absolutely free. Click here.