OSHA Letter on Injuries to Company?
For the first time this year one of my customers had to report their injuries last February for 2023. In May they called me in to assist them. They reported at that time they had a TIR, or as I call it and "OSHA Recordable Rate" of 10.4. When I looked up their TIR for their NACIS code in the most recent BLS Table 1 their NACIS was 3.1. I immediately warned them that they were are risk for an OSHA visit due to having a TIR 3 times their NACIS rate and reminded them they had reported their injuries to OSHA.
Two weeks ago they got a letter from the Office of Statistical Analysis of OSHA. The letter informed them that their DART rate was 5.2 for 2023 but their NACIS reported DART was 2.2 (for 2022). The letter strongly suggested they get involved with one of the OSHA voluntary programs or the state consultation service.
We are in Wisconsin which is a Federal OSHA state. Wisconsin does have a voluntary consultation service from our Department of Labor for employees under 250 total employees. Most of my clients do not like the state program as to be involved you must agree to fix anything and everything they find or they report it to OSHA. On the plus side I believe you get a 6-month pass from "OSHA Program Audits" while involved with the state.
This is a small shop of approximately 100 employees. I told them they are on A List. but this is all so new that I do not understand all the implications of this List. Anyone have any experience with these types of letters?
Comments (6)
I've never recieved a letter like you mentioned personnally at my previous employers, nor have any of Arrow Safety's customers (that I'm aware of, at least), but I do know that the Office of Statistical Analysis is who handles OSHA's new Injury Tracking Application (ITA), so your customer is definitely on their radar right now. Sometimes an investigation comes out of it, but sometimes not. However, with that being said, depending on when they submitted thier 2023 info to OSHA's ITA, OSHA's 6-month window to conduct an investigation may have passed, so they may be in the clear and maybe OSHA is just making this recommendation since they can't investigate them.
Regarding the 6-month pass from "programmed inspections", I don't believe that's true because the consultative audit is kept 100% confidential from OSHA's enforcement side. This means that the enforcement side (who conducts the programmed inspections) would have no knowledge of the consultative audit even taking place at all, so if they have no knowledge of it, then there's no "pass" to be given.
The consultative audit can be very beneficial, though, if companies are willing to fix any issues. OSHA only documents the "serious" hazards, so if it's an "other than serious" hazard, then they may verbally say something, but they won't document it in the report or otherwise "require" you to fix it. Of the ones I've been involved in, OSHA's consultative side has always been reasonable on the abatement dates/timelines, worked with the company to ensure understanding of the requirements, etc.