Injury Reporting Deadline Arrives, but Mandate’s Future Uncertain

It’s the deadline many employers were hoping they wouldn’t face.

More than 450,000 worksites on Dec. 15 must hand over to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration electronic summaries of their injury and illness records for 2016. OSHA has long required employers to keep logs of job-related injuries and illnesses, but the agency didn’t require employers to file copies with the government.

“It remains to be seen how OSHA uses that information,” Todd Logsdon, a partner with Fisher & Phillips LLP in Louisville, Ky., told Bloomberg Environment.

OSHA might use the data to target ...