Governor Brown signed AB 2334 into law last summer. The new law requires that, as part of occupational injury and illness reporting, employers additionally file specified injury and illness forms electronically with Cal/OSHA no later than February 1 of each year.

And requires Cal/OSHA to develop a searchable database for one of those forms relating to summary information on its web site by a date specified and further requires Cal/OSHA to post those forms on the database within 90 days of receipt. “While posting of injury information at each worksite is important, specific workplace injury and illness information is not accessible to the public and prospective employees in an easily accessible database on the Internet.”

The new law seems to have been triggered by federal initiatives to reduce employer reporting requirements.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) adopted the Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses rule in 2016. This rule requires electronic submission of certain occupational injury and illness reports by covered employers with at least 250 employees and by smaller employers in high-risk industries. In the fall of 2017,

However, OSHA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to potentially relax these workplace injury and illness reporting requirements.

In response to the federal initiative to reduce employer reporting requirements, California decided to pass a new law that went the other way – Increase employer reporting requirements. To quickly implement AB 2334, Cal/OSHA’s emergency regulations requiring certain employers in California to electronically submit each year their Form 300A summaries of work-related injuries and illnesses to federal OSHA have been approved by the Office of Administrative Law (OAL).

The following employers must submit online the Form 300A covering calendar year 2017 by December 31, 2018:

– All employers with 250 or more employees, unless specifically exempted by section 14300.2 of Title 8 of the California Code of Regulations.

– Employers with 20 to 249 employees in the specific industries listed in Appendix H of the emergency regulations. There are approximately 67 industries on this list. Examples include construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, grocery and specialty food stores, and similar industries. .

Employers described above that are now required to submit their 300A summaries online each year should follow the instructions on federal OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application webpage.

Cal/OSHA will proceed with the formal rulemaking process to make the emergency regulations permanent by submitting the required documentation to OAL. The rulemaking process will include a public comment period and public hearing. The dates for the comment period and public hearing will be posted on Cal/OSHA’s proposed regulation page.

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA, is the division within the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) that helps protect California’s workers from health and safety hazards on the job in almost every workplace.