National Nurses United welcomes the latest occupational health and safety rule to Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses while also calling on the Agency to create stronger enforcement policies using the new data that this rule makes available.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) new rule opens access to the logs on which employers are required to record each injury and illness and related hazards, known as OSHA 300 logs.

OSHA plans to post much of this information publicly on their website after removing identifying information about workers.

These records are vital information for OSHA to identify dangerous hazards that may cause injury, illness, or death to more workers. OSHA’s access to this information is long overdue—currently, these logs are only available to OSHA during an inspection or through limited surveys with lag time of a year.

The new rule also includes important requirements for employee protections, including requiring employees to be trained on how to report occupational injury or illness and their right to report, requiring that employer’s reporting procedures be “reasonable,” and incorporates the existing protections against retaliation for reporting.

"This new rule will be just another hollow victory in the name of protecting workers if OSHA is not able to follow it up with a strong enforcement program," says Bonnie Castillo, NNU's Health and Safety Director.

OSHA cannot simply rely on the online public posting of the injury and illness logs to keep employers accountable. They must utilize this newly available information to target and enhance their enforcement program.