OSHA fines over one-million dollars have become more common. But here’s one with a twist: It’s not for workplace hazards — it’s for recordkeeping violations.

OSHA has issued Goodman Manufacturing Co. 83 willful citations for failing to record and improperly recording work-related injuries and illnesses at the company’s Houston air conditioning cooling facility.

The proposed fines total $1.215 million.

OSHA received a complaint that Goodman wasn’t properly recording injuries.

An investigation showed the company had either not recorded or failed to properly record the nature and/or duration of 72% of employee injuries and illnesses from January 2008 to March 15, 2010.

OSHA categorized the recordkeeping citations as willful because the company was extremely knowledgeable about OSHA’s requirements but made many unsupportable decisions.

The company has 15 business days from receipt of the citations to decide whether to contest the citations.

OSHA has implemented a National Emphasis Program (NEP) on Recordkeeping to assess the accuracy of injuries and illnesses recorded by employers. You can find out more about the NEP here (PDF).

A newly added two-hour component focuses on workers’ rights. Among the topics it covers in detail:

• how to file complaints about your employer
• your right to refuse any work you think is too dangerous, and
• assurances that if you do either of the above, you’ll be protected by whistleblower provisions.

The workers’ rights component is now a required part of every 10- and 30-hour class.

“For too long, workers have avoided making claims of unsafe work conditions out of fear of losing their jobs,” OSHA head David Michaels said in a release. “We are confident that this new training will embolden workers to speak up when they find work practices that endanger their lives and the lives of their co-workers.”

Is OSHA opening a can of worms by trying to “embolden” workers, or is this needed to address chronic under-reporting of injuries. Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

ABC News included the video as part of a Nightline story on workplace safety and OSHA.

OSHA fined Cintas $2.75 million for violations of safety rules involving the dryers, a result of investigations after Gomez’s death.

The ABC News piece is worth watching for another reason: In it, OSHA administrator David Michaels says, “There is an epidemic of programs that discourage workers from reporting injuries.”

He mentioned incentive programs that reward workers when there are no reported injuries.

The piece goes on to tell the story of two Smurfit-Stone workers who say they were directly discouraged from reporting workplace injuries by their supervisors.

Michaels made it clear OSHA is looking for companies that hide injuries. “We know we’re not getting accurate figures, and we need to do something about that,” Michaels said.

Does your company have a safety incentive program that rewards employees for something other than a lack of injuries? Let us know about it in the Comments Box below.

The question is more important these days because OSHA is cracking down on underreporting of occupational injuries.

A report issued in November by the Government Accountability Office showed some employers underreport injuries to reduce insurance premiums and workers fail to report injuries because they fear being fired.

In the wake of that report, OSHA unleashed a National Emphasis Program on recordkeeping. The targets: companies in high-injury industries that report much lower than average injury rates.

An article in Business Week highlights this current situation.

Example: AK Steel reduced its annual injuries by 96% from 1994 to 2009.

It’s that type of injury improvement that raises the eyebrows of some workplace safety experts. “It is extremely unlikely that injury rates would plummet like this,” said Susan Baker, a scholar of workplace injuries at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

AK Steel had good cause to improve its safety practices: 10 workers died at company plants from 1993 to 1996, leading to a $1.9 million OSHA fine.

But some former AK Steel workers tell Business Week that injuries appear to be down because workers who report them are penalized with time off without pay.

An AK Steel spokesman says, “We make no apologies for our safety program and all of its components, including discipline.” At the same time, the company considers not reporting an injury an “extraordinarily serious offense.”

How do you hold employees responsible for safety rules through discipline, yet make sure you don’t discourage reporting of workplace injuries? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

When SafetyNewsAlert.com reported on the OSHA recordkeeping inspection program, readers responded with their best safety incentive ideas that don’t discourage injury reporting:

• Bill B.: True safety incentives are a positive reinforcement of the safety culture. We have set up a program for “on the spot” recognition for above and beyond safety actions. Seems to be working on our construction site with 20 contractors and over 70 workers.
• Dave B.: Supervisors should reward safe practices like wearing PPE, reporting hazards or developing safe solutions. When the employees wearing proper PPE and following safety procedures get all the free stuff, it doesn’t take long for the other employees to join in.
• Safety Sam: I developed a plan to base incentives on employee participation instead of simply not getting hurt. I made a list of things that I wanted to get done, and then presented that to the employee safety committee with the mandate to base getting the incentives on getting this stuff done. It was hugely successful and took away any edge that OSHA might have had in using our incentive plan against us. (Sam is at an OSHA Voluntary Protection Program site.)
• Tim H.: (1) Base the incentive on behavior (individual and collective) not injury reports, and (2) Structure a supervisor’s performance review so that a failure to make a required injury report is a negative.
• Alex: (Our plan is) based on proactive activities reported to and recorded and audited by the safety department. Measurements include number of near-misses reported, job/task observations, area inspections, safety team meetings, completion of compliance and awareness training, and monthly safety topics.

Even more comments had this general theme: Reward positive safety behavior, not a lack of injuries.

You can take our Quick Poll on safety incentive programs on our home page.

That’s what happened to Sims Bark Co. and Sims Stone Co. in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.

OSHA received a complaint about safety at one of Sims’ locations and determined that similar hazards might exist at its other locations.

Result: $576,750 in OSHA fines after inspectors visited six Sims facilities.

Willful citations were issued for:

• allowing workers to service, unjam and clean machinery without procedures to ensure they wouldn’t be caught in or struck by equipment or burned by machines’ heat strips, and
• exposing workers to dangers associated with being caught in fast moving machinery.

OSHA issued serious citations for:

• lack of employee training
• exposure to electric shocks
• lack of fall protection
• lack of machine guards
• exposure to noise hazards
• struck-by dangers, and
• accumulation of combustible dust.

Sims also faces other-than-serious citations for failing to keep injury/illness logs according to OSHA rules.

The company has 15 business days to comply with or contest the citations.

Michaels, a professor at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, detailed his views in Congressional testimony two years ago.

To paraphrase, he saw the agency as weak, unmotivated, understaffed, heavily impeded and generally ineffective.

Here are a few excerpts, which clearly signal his views on recordkeeping, ergonomics, rulemaking and the General Duty Clause, among other topics:

• “Preventable work related injuries and illnesses … are unacceptably high. Furthermore, the true incidence of these conditions is far higher than reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
• OSHA enforcement does not appear to be effective in further reducing injury rates. …  Statistical analyses indicate that (any reported) decrease can be attributable to changes in OSHA recordkeeping rules.
• “For most hazardous chemicals, OSHA’s standards are either inadequate or totally absent. One could write a book about the hazards that OSHA has failed to regulate adequately.”
• “The primary blame (for OSHA’s failure to issue appropriate health standards) rests in a system that makes OSHA standard setting inordinately difficult and resource-intensive.”
• “OSHA has abandoned the general duty clause. It is time for the agency to start using it again.”
• “Ergonomic injuries cost employers $15-20 billion annually in workers’ compensation costs alone, yet this number one workplace safety and health problem is not even mentioned on OSHA’s most recent regulatory agenda.”
• “OSHA doesn’t have the staff to work on more than one or two standards at a time, and … each standard takes years to complete. Unless things change radically, only a handful of the thousands of chemicals in daily use in American workplaces will ever be the subject of an OSHA standard.”

There’s no question that OSHA will change radically if Michaels is approved by the Senate and moves his agenda forward — an aggressive approach that Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and interim OSHA head Jordan Barab appear to have already set in motion.

Do you expect OSHA to make your job tougher in the coming years? Tell us what you think in the Comment Box below.

OSHA is preparing a National Emphasis Program (NEP) on recordkeeping. Its targets:

• Companies in high-injury industries with low injury rates. OSHA will check to see that records match reality.
• Incentive programs that encourage employees not to report injuries. Example: The unit with the lowest injury rate for the quarter will win prizes or get a special financial reward.
• Disincentives to report injuries. Example: Workers who report injuries are disciplined or fired.

Speaking at the American Society of Safety Engineers’ (ASSE) Safety 2009 conference in San Antonio, acting OSHA administrator Jordan Barab said the agency isn’t opposed to incentive programs, as long as the incentives are for proactive measures.

Barab said he’s somewhat skeptical of behavioral programs that always blame workers for incidents and injuries.

In an interview with SafetyNewsAlert.com after his speech, Barab pointed to the 2005 BP Texas City, TX, disaster in which 15 employees were killed and 170 were injured in an explosion. Barab said the first thing BP did was to fire a bunch of workers “when that was only the tip of the iceberg,” according to an investigation by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.

On another topic, Barab said OSHA isn’t eliminating the Voluntary Protection Program (VPP). However, he added that the days of OSHA forming alliances with various industry groups instead of enacting new or revising existing standards are over.

When will OSHA have a permanent administrator? Barab said at this point, it looks like it will be fall at the earliest. However, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has told Barab not to wait. When Barab took the position as interim head of OSHA, Solis told him to go full speed ahead on her workplace safety agenda, which includes vigorous enforcement and enactment of new standards. Barab will assume the No. 2 position at OSHA once a permanent administrator is confirmed.

Barab said OSHA will react quickly to injury trends, such as moving inspectors to Texas, starting in July, to counter the high number of construction fatalities in the state (see our earlier story here). “A SWAT team of OSHA inspectors will fan out over Texas,” Barab said, to visit sites in locales where construction fatalities and injuries have been a particular problem.

For the last eight years, OSHA has de-emphasized recordkeeping inspections. That’s about to change.

OSHA is preparing a National Emphasis Program (NEP) on recordkeeping. Its targets:

• Companies in high-injury industries with low injury rates. OSHA will check to see that records match reality.
• Incentive programs that encourage employees not to report injuries. Example: The unit with the lowest injury rate for the quarter will win prizes or get a special financial reward.
• Disincentives to report injuries. Example: Workers who report injuries are disciplined or fired.

Speaking at the American Society of Safety Engineers’ (ASSE) Safety 2009 conference in San Antonio, acting OSHA administrator Jordan Barab said the agency isn’t opposed to incentive programs, as long as the incentives are for proactive measures.

Barab said he’s somewhat skeptical of behavioral programs that always blame workers for incidents and injuries.

In an interview with SafetyNewsAlert.com after his speech, Barab pointed to the 2005 BP Texas City, TX, disaster in which 15 employees were killed and 170 were injured in an explosion. Barab said the first thing BP did was to fire a bunch of workers “when that was only the tip of the iceberg,” according to an investigation by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.

On another topic, Barab said OSHA isn’t eliminating the Voluntary Protection Program (VPP). However, he added that the days of OSHA forming alliances with various industry groups instead of enacting new or revising existing standards are over.

When will OSHA have a permanent administrator? Barab said at this point, it looks like it will be fall at the earliest. However, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has told Barab not to wait. When Barab took the position as interim head of OSHA, Solis told him to go full speed ahead on her workplace safety agenda, which includes vigorous enforcement and enactment of new standards. Barab will assume the No. 2 position at OSHA once a permanent administrator is confirmed.

Barab said OSHA will react quickly to injury trends, such as moving inspectors to Texas, starting in July, to counter the high number of construction fatalities in the state (see our earlier story here). “A SWAT team of OSHA inspectors will fan out over Texas,” Barab said, to visit sites in locales where construction fatalities and injuries have been a particular problem.

Check back with SafetyNewsAlert.com often this week for updates from the ASSE Safety 2009 conference.

The annual tally should be posted on OSHA Form 300A and remain in a place where employees can view it through April 30. State-plan states have similar requirements.

What counts as a recordable injury? Any one of the following makes recording the injury mandatory:

• death
• days away from work
• restricted work or transfer to another job
• medical treatment beyond first aid
• loss of consciousness
• diagnosis of a significant injury or illness by a physician or other licensed healthcare professional, or
• a needlestick or sharps injury involving contamination by another person’s blood or other potentially infectious materials.

Some businesses are exempt from posting Form 300A, including those with 10 or fewer employees or those classified under a specific list of industries, which can be viewed online here.

What if you’re required to post, but you didn’t have any recordable injuries last year? You must still post the form with zeros in all appropriate spaces.

OSHA has a Web page that outlines its recordkeeping requirements.

Yes, says OSHA.

ESIS, Inc., a global risk control services company, asked OSHA whether it’s acceptable to keep required written safety programs in electronic form only.

Traditionally, programs such as those for bloodborne pathogens, hazard communication and permit-required confined spaces have been kept in separate binders where employees can refer to them, as required by OSHA standards.

In its request for clarification of OSHA rules, ESIS also noted that keeping forms on a company intranet can provide significant benefits in consistency, ease of use, and accuracy in maintaining and updating these materials in a timely manner.

OSHA agreed that companies could benefit by keeping these programs on an employer’s Intranet, as long as the program meets all other requirements of the standard in question.

Employers must make sure employees know how to easily access the electronic records.

OSHA’s Standard Interpretation Letter on this topic is available here.