• 23
  • September
    2010

The stated goal of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, aka OSHA, is to "ensure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education and assistance."

Of course, OSHA can only step in to enforce rules that are being broken and can only ensure safety in workplaces that are known to be unsafe. Action in both of these areas depends on quality information and consistent reporting, either from workers or the businesses themselves.

For example, if a Texas oil refinery is reporting a large number of workplace injuries due to falls, then OSHA may be able to step in and help the company determine why so many workers are falling and what can be done to prevent falls in the future.

As L.M. Sixel writes in The Houston Chronicle, a large number of employers fail to report such accidents and injuries, in some cases paying injured employees to keep quiet. However, OSHA is starting to crack down on such indiscretions and that's cause for some concern among employers engaging in such misdirection.

Last year, Sixel reports, OSHA upped efforts to get an accurate picture of "injury and illness record-keeping in a variety of industries." To do this, OSHA offices across the country are required to spot-check instances of both with random employees in several industries.

Then, OSHA investigators will check the feedback received from workers against the reports submitted by their employer. Investigators are also watching out for other inconsistencies and suspicious activity on the part of employers.

One Texas company has already been cited for a failure to report illness and injury among employees. OSHA is currently pursuing more than $1 million in penalties.

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