OSHA targets injury logs (UPDATE)

Published: November 17, 2009
Tags: Bureau of Labor, Government Accountability Office, Haag, injury, osha, OSHA 300 Logs, OSHA record keeping, Stille, The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, U.S. Government Accountability Office, Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene

By Sean Ryan

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is refining its inspection focus in response to evidence that companies deliberately underreport injuries.

But as fears of inaccurate data boil over at the federal level with a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released Monday, regulators in Wisconsin say companies, if anything, have historically reported too many injuries.

“I don’t think it’s going to affect us too much because I think that Wisconsin employers generally try to be pretty conscientious,” said Dona Haag, program and policy analyst for the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene who reviews company injury logs for OSHA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

OSHA inspectors, adhering to an inspection program unveiled in late September, are combing through company injury records, or OSHA 300 logs, in search of inaccurate information. Monday’s GAO report supports the reasoning behind the inspection program.

According to the report, 47 percent of surveyed doctors and others involved in workplace safety reported they were pressured by workers to downplay injury reports because of fear of retribution or to reach employer-established safety goals. The report called on OSHA to police company compliance more closely.

Wisconsin OSHA agents are targeting company injury records under the federal OSHA record-keeping program, said Kim Stille, area director for the Madison OSHA office. Area offices in Wisconsin received a list of companies with injury rates much lower than the industry average, and inspectors now are checking those companies’ 2008 records for accuracy, she said.

Citing an agency policy, Stille would not reveal the names of the companies on the list, but she said construction is a targeted industry.

However, Stille said, Wisconsin companies have a reputation for reporting too many injuries by logging those that are not required.

“Wisconsin has always fared really well in respect to those regulations,” she said.

Haag said the OSHA 300 logs have three categories of injuries companies must report. Wisconsin companies traditionally over-report in the “other” category, which is for injuries such as first aid, stitches or other problems that do not require employees spend time away from the office to recover. In 2008, Wisconsin logs showed 2.4 of every 100 full-time workers were listed in the “other” category, compared with 2.1 of every 100 nationally.

Wisconsin’s history in keeping strong OSHA records traces back to a former program called the Wisconsin 200, said Jeff Clark, attorney with Reinhart, Boerner Van Deuren SC, Milwaukee. Under the program, inspectors in Wisconsin compared company OSHA logs with workers’ compensation reports for a given year, he said, and decided which 200 state companies had the worst records.

Those companies were targeted for OSHA inspections, Clark said.

The Wisconsin 200 program ended in 1997, Stille said. She said even if the new focus on records does not turn up violations, it can focus company executives on the value of records pointing out where there could be safety problems.

“That’s how they should be used,” she said, “as a trending or tracking mechanism.”