Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation To Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness, 91792-91810 [2016-30410]

Agencies

• DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration

[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 243 (Monday, December 19, 2016)]
[Rules and Regulations]
[Pages 91792-91810]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2016-30410]


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DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

29 CFR Part 1904

[Docket No. OSHA-2015-0006]
RIN 1218-AC84


Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation To Make and 
Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness

AGENCY: Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Labor.

ACTION: Final rule.

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SUMMARY: OSHA is amending its recordkeeping regulations to clarify that 
the duty to make and maintain accurate records of work-related injuries 
and illnesses is an ongoing obligation. The duty to record an injury or 
illness continues for as long as the employer must keep records of the 
recordable injury or illness; the duty does not expire just because the 
employer fails to create the necessary records when first required to 
do so. The amendments consist of revisions to the titles of some 
existing sections and subparts and changes to the text of some existing 
provisions. The amendments add no new compliance obligations and do not 
require employers to make records of any injuries or illnesses for 
which records are not currently required to be made.
    The amendments in this rule are adopted in response to a decision 
of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia 
Circuit. In that case, a majority held that the Occupational Safety and 
Health Act does not permit OSHA to impose a continuing recordkeeping 
obligation on employers. One judge filed a concurring opinion 
disagreeing with this reading of the statute, but finding that the text 
of OSHA's recordkeeping regulations did not impose continuing 
recordkeeping duties. OSHA disagrees with the majority's reading of the 
law, but agrees that its recordkeeping regulations were not clear with 
respect to the continuing nature of employers' recordkeeping 
obligations. This final rule is designed to clarify the regulations in 
advance of possible future federal court litigation that could further 
develop the law on the statutory issues addressed in the D.C. Circuit's 
decision.

DATES: This final rule becomes effective on January 18, 2017. 
Collections of information: There are collections of information 
contained in this final rule (see Section XI, Office of Management and 
Budget Review Under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995). 
Notwithstanding the general date of applicability that applies to all 
other requirements contained in the final rule, affected parties do not 
have to comply with the collections of information in the recordkeeping 
regulations (as revised by this final rule) until the Department of 
Labor publishes a separate document in the Federal Register announcing 
that the Office of Management and Budget has approved them under the 
Paperwork Reduction Act.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Press inquiries: Mr. Frank Meilinger, 
Director, Office of Communications, OSHA, U.S. Department of Labor, 
Room N-3647, 200 Constitution Avenue NW., Washington, DC 20210; 
telephone (202) 693-1999; email meilinger.francis2@dol.gov.
    Technical inquiries: Ms. Mandy Edens, Director, Directorate of 
Technical Support and Emergency Management, OSHA, U.S. Department of 
Labor, Room N-3653, 200 Constitution Avenue NW., Washington, DC 20210; 
telephone (202) 693-2270; email edens.mandy@dol.gov.
    Copies of this Federal Register notice and news releases: 
Electronic copies of these documents are available at OSHA's Web page 
at https://www.osha.gov.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

Table of Contents

I. Background
    A. The OSH Act and Citation of OSH Act Violations
    B. OSHA's Recordkeeping Regulations and the Importance of 
Accurate Workplace Injury and Illness Data
    C. An Employer's Failure to Record a Recordable Illness or 
Injury Is a Failure To Maintain Accurate Injury and Illness Records 
and Is a Continuing Violation
    D. The D.C. Circuit's Decision in Volks II
    E. Events Preceding This Final Rule
II. Legal Authority
    A. Overview
    B. The OSH Act Authorizes the Secretary To Impose a Continuing 
Obligation on Employers To Make and Maintain Accurate Records of 
Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses, and Incomplete or Otherwise 
Inaccurate Records Create Ongoing, Citable Conditions
    1. Section 8(c) of the Act Governs Employers' Recordkeeping 
Obligations, and That Provision Authorizes the Imposition of 
Continuing Obligations on Employers To Make and Maintain Accurate 
Records of Work-Related Illnesses and Injuries
    2. The OSH Act's Statute of Limitations Does Not Define OSHA 
Violations or Address When Violations Occur, Nor Does the Language 
in Section 9(c) Preclude Continuing Recordkeeping Violations
    3. Incomplete or Otherwise Inaccurate Records of Work-Related 
Illnesses and Injuries Create an Ongoing Condition Detrimental to 
Full Enforcement of the Act
    4. OSHA Is Acting Within Its Regulatory Authority, and 
Consistently With the General Case Law, in Issuing This Clarifying 
Rule
III. Summary and Explanation of the Final Rule
    A. Description of Revisions
    1. Section 1904.0--Purpose
    2. Subpart C--Making and Maintaining Accurate Records, 
Recordkeeping Forms, and Recording Criteria
    3. Paragraph (a) of Sec.  1904.4--Basic Requirement
    4. Note to Paragraph (a) of Sec.  1904.4
    5. Paragraph (b)(3) of Sec.  1904.29--How quickly must each 
injury or illness be recorded?
    6. Section 1904.32--Year-End Review and Annual Summary

[[Page 91793]]

    7. Paragraph (a) of Sec.  1904.32--Basic Requirement
    8. Paragraph (b)(1) of Sec.  1904.32--How extensively do I have 
to review the OSHA 300 Log at the end of the year?
    9. Section 1904.33--Retention and Maintenance of Accurate 
Records
    10. Paragraph (b)(1) of Sec.  1904.33--Other than the obligation 
identified in Sec.  1904.32, do I have further recording duties with 
respect to OSHA 300 Logs and 301 Incident Reports during the five-
year retention period?
    11. Paragraph (b)(2) of Sec.  1904.33--Do I have to make 
additions or corrections to the annual summary during the five-year 
retention period?
    12. Paragraph (b)(3) of Sec.  1904.33
    13. Section 1904.34--Change in Business Ownership
    14. Paragraph (b)(2) of Sec.  1904.35--Do I have to give my 
employees and their representatives access to the OSHA injury and 
illness records?
    15. Paragraph (b)(2)(iii) of Sec.  1904.35--If an employee or 
representative asks for access to the OSHA 300 Log, when do I have 
to provide it?
    16. Subpart E--Reporting Accurate Fatality, Injury, and Illness 
Information to the Government
    17. Section 1904.40--Providing Accurate Records to Government 
Representatives
    18. Paragraph (a) of Sec.  1904.40--Basic Requirement
IV. State Plans
V. Final Economic Analysis
VI. Regulatory Flexibility Certification
VII. Environmental Impact Assessment
VIII. Federalism
IX. Unfunded Mandates
X. Consultation and Coordination With Indian Tribal Governments
XI. Office of Management and Budget Review Under the Paperwork 
Reduction Act of 1995

I. Background

A. The OSH Act and Citation of OSH Act Violations

    The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act or Act) 
arose out of a Congressional finding that personal injuries and 
illnesses arising out of work situations impose a substantial burden 
upon, and are a hindrance to, interstate commerce in terms of lost 
production, wage loss, medical expenses, and disability compensation 
payments. See 29 U.S.C. 651(a). Accordingly, the purpose of the statute 
is to assure so far as possible every working man and woman in the 
Nation safe and healthful working conditions. See 29 U.S.C. 651(b).
    To effectuate the Act's purpose, Congress authorized the Secretary 
of Labor to promulgate occupational safety and health standards (29 
U.S.C. 655); a standard, as defined in the Act, requires conditions, or 
the adoption or use of one or more practices, means, methods, 
operations, or processes, reasonably necessary or appropriate to 
provide safe or healthful employment and places of employment. See 29 
U.S.C. 652(8). The Act also grants broad authority to the Secretary to 
promulgate other types of regulations such as those related to employer 
self-inspections and keeping employees informed of matters related to 
occupational safety and health. 29 U.S.C. 657(c). The OSH Act 
specifically directs the Secretary to promulgate regulations requiring 
employers to make and maintain accurate records of work-related 
injuries and illnesses. 29 U.S.C. 657(c)(1) and (2), 673(a); see also 
651(b)(12), 657(g)(2), 673(e).
    OSHA issues citations and assesses monetary penalties when it finds 
that employers are not complying with the Act or with applicable 
standards and regulations. 29 U.S.C. 658, 659, 666. Section 9(c) of the 
OSH Act contains a statute of limitations providing that no citation 
may be issued after the expiration of six months following ``the 
occurrence of any violation.'' 29 U.S.C. 658(c). Generally, OSH Act 
violations continue to occur for as long as employees are exposed to 
the condition posed by the non-compliant workplace. See Sec'y of Labor 
v. Cent. of Georgia R.R. Co., 5 BNA OSHC 1209, 1211 (Rev. Comm'n 1977) 
(explaining that a violation occurs ``whenever . . . [a] standard is 
not complied with and an employee has access to the resulting zone of 
danger''). Thus, employers have an ongoing obligation to correct 
conditions that violate OSHA standards and regulations, and under 
section 9(c), violations are subject to citations and penalties for up 
to six months after the last instance of employee exposure to the 
violative condition.

B. OSHA's Recordkeeping Regulations and the Importance of Accurate 
Workplace Injury and Illness Data

    In 1971, OSHA issued its first recordkeeping regulations at 29 CFR 
part 1904. OSHA promulgated revisions to these regulations in 2001 in 
an effort to improve the quality of workplace injury and illness 
records by making OSHA's recordkeeping system easier to use and 
understand. See 66 FR 5916 (January 19, 2001).
    OSHA's recordkeeping regulations require employers to record 
information about certain injuries and illnesses occurring in their 
workplaces, and to make that information available to employees, OSHA, 
and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Employers must record work-
related injuries and illnesses that meet one or more recording 
criteria, including injuries and illnesses resulting in death, loss of 
consciousness, days away from work, restricted work activity or job 
transfer, medical treatment beyond first aid, or a diagnosis of a 
significant injury or illness by a physician or other licensed health 
care professional. 29 CFR 1904.7. Employers must document each 
recordable injury or illness on an ``OSHA 300'' form, which is a log of 
all work-related injuries and illnesses. 29 CFR 1904.29(a) through 
(b)(1). Employers also must prepare a supplementary ``OSHA 301 Incident 
Report'' or equivalent form for each recordable injury and illness; the 
Incident Reports provide additional details about the injuries and 
illnesses recorded in the 300 Log. 29 CFR 1904.29(b)(2).
    At the end of each calendar year, employers must review their 300 
Logs to verify that the entries are complete and accurate. 29 CFR 
1904.32(a)(1). Employers also must correct any deficiencies identified 
during this annual review. Id. By February 1 of each year, employers 
must create, certify, and post annual summaries of the cases listed on 
their 300 Logs for the prior calendar year. 29 CFR 1904.32(a), (b). 
Annual summaries must remain posted until April 30 each year. 29 CFR 
1904.32(b)(6). Employers must retain their OSHA Logs, Incident Reports, 
and annual summaries for five years following the end of the calendar 
year that they cover. 29 CFR 1904.33(a). The regulations contain 
provisions explaining when records need to be revised during the 
retention period.
    Accurate injury and illness records serve several important 
purposes. See 66 FR at 5916-17, January 19, 2001. One purpose is to 
provide information to employers. The information in the OSHA-required 
records makes employers more aware of the kinds of injuries and 
illnesses occurring and the hazards that cause or contribute to them. 
When employers analyze and review the information in their records, 
they can identify and correct hazardous workplace conditions. Injury 
and illness records are essential for employers to manage their safety 
and health programs effectively; these records permit employers to 
track injuries and illnesses over time so they can evaluate the 
effectiveness of protective measures implemented in response to 
identified hazards.
    Similarly, employees--who have access to OSHA injury and illness 
records throughout the five-year retention period (see 29 CFR 
1904.35)--can use information about the occupational injuries and 
illnesses occurring in their workplaces to become better informed 
about, and more alert to, the hazards they face. Employees who

[[Page 91794]]

are aware of the hazards around them may be more likely to follow safe 
work practices and to report workplace hazards to their employers. When 
employees are aware of workplace hazards, and participate in the 
identification and control of those hazards, the overall level of 
safety and health in the workplace can improve.
    OSHA also has access to employer injury and illness records during 
the retention period (see 29 CFR 1904.40 and 1904.41), and these 
records are an important source of information for OSHA and enhance its 
enforcement efforts. During the initial stages of an inspection, an 
OSHA representative reviews the employer's injury and illness data so 
that OSHA can focus its inspection on the hazards revealed by the 
records. In some years, OSHA has also surveyed a subset of employers 
covered by the OSH Act for their injury and illness data, and used that 
information to help identify the most dangerous types of worksites and 
the most prevalent types of safety and health hazards.
    Additionally, BLS uses data derived from employers' injury and 
illness records to develop national statistics on workplace injuries 
and illnesses. These statistics include information about the source, 
nature, and type of the injuries and illnesses that are occurring in 
the nation's workplaces. To obtain the data to develop national 
statistics, BLS and participating State agencies conduct an annual 
survey of employers in almost all sectors of private industry. BLS 
makes the aggregate survey results available for research purposes and 
for public information. This data provides information about the 
incidence of workplace injuries and illnesses and the nature and 
magnitude of workplace safety and health problems. Congress, OSHA, and 
safety and health policymakers in Federal, State, and local governments 
use BLS statistics to make decisions concerning safety and health 
legislation, programs, and standards. And employers and employees can 
use BLS statistics to compare the injury and illness data from their 
workplaces with data from the nation as a whole.

C. An Employer's Failure To Record a Recordable Illness or Injury Is a 
Failure To Maintain Accurate Injury and Illness Records and Is a 
Continuing Violation

    A continuing violation exists when there is noncompliance with 
``the text of . . . [a] pertinent law [that] imposes a continuing 
obligation to act or refrain from acting.'' Earle v. Dist. of Columbia, 
707 F.3d 299, 307 (D.C. Cir. 2012). Where there is an ongoing 
obligation to act, each day the action is not taken results in a 
continuing, ongoing violation. In other words, ``a new claim accrues 
each day the violation is extant.'' Interamericas Inv., Ltd. v. Fed. 
Reserve Sys., 111 F.3d 376, 382 (5th Cir. 1997). For example, in United 
States v. Edelkind, 525 F.3d 388 (5th Cir. 2008), the Fifth Circuit 
found that willfully failing to pay child support as required by 
federal law was a continuing offense because ``each day's acts . . . 
[brought] a renewed threat of the substantive evil Congress sought to 
prevent.'' Id. at 394-95 (internal quotation marks and citations 
omitted). And in Postow v. OBA Federal Savings & Loan Association, 627 
F.2d 1370 (D.C. Cir. 1980), the D.C. Circuit held that a lender's 
failure to provide required disclosures to borrowers was a continuing 
violation of the Truth-in-Lending Act because the violation subverted 
the goals of the statute every day the borrowers did not have the 
information. Id. at 1379-80. See also, e.g., United States v. Bailey, 
444 U.S. 394, 413 (1980) (escape from federal custody is a continuing 
offense in light of ``the continuing threat to society posed by an 
escaped prisoner''); United States v. George, 625 F.3d 1124 (9th Cir. 
2010) (failure to comply with statute requiring registration as a sex 
offender is a continuing offense), vacated on other grounds, 672 F.3d 
1126 (9th Cir. 2012); United States v. Franklin, 188 F.2d 182 (7th Cir. 
1951) (Alien Registration Act imposes ongoing registration obligation; 
failure to register is a continuing violation).
    OSHA has long treated recordkeeping violations under the OSH Act as 
continuing violations--and, as explained below in Section II.B.1 of 
this preamble--this view is consistent with section 8(c) of the Act, in 
which Congress instructed the Secretary to require employers to make 
and maintain accurate records of workplace injuries and illnesses. 
OSHA's longstanding position is that an employer's duty to record an 
injury or illness continues for the full duration of the record-
retention-and-access period, i.e., for five years after the end of the 
calendar year in which the injury or illness became recordable. This 
means that if an employer initially fails to record a recordable injury 
or illness, the employer still has an ongoing duty to record that case; 
the recording obligation does not expire simply because the employer 
failed to record the case when it was first required to do so. As long 
as an employer fails to comply with its ongoing duty to record an 
injury or illness, and therefore with its obligation to maintain 
accurate records, there is an ongoing violation of OSHA's recordkeeping 
requirements that continues to occur every day employees work at the 
site. Therefore, OSHA can cite employers for such recordkeeping 
violations for up to six months after the five-year retention period 
expires without running afoul of the OSH Act's statute of 
limitations.\1\ OSHA has consistently issued such citations since it 
enacted its first recordkeeping regulations, as evidenced by the case 
law in the following paragraph. The purpose of this final rule is 
simply to clarify what has always been OSHA's interpretation of its 
recordkeeping regulations.
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    \1\ Of course, OSHA may not issue a citation more than six 
months after the employer corrects the violation. See, e.g., Sec'y 
of Labor v. Manganas Painting Co., 21 BNA OSHC 2043, 2048 (Rev. 
Comm'n 2007) (citation was time-barred where the employer abated the 
violation more than six months prior to the issuance date).
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    The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission has upheld 
OSHA's position on the continuing nature of recordkeeping violations. 
See, e.g., Sec'y of Labor v. Gen. Dynamics, 15 BNA OSHC 2122 (Rev. 
Comm'n 1993) (recordkeeping violations ``occur'' at any point during 
the retention period when records are inaccurate, so citations for 
those violations are not barred simply because they are issued more 
than six months after the obligation to record first arose); Sec'y of 
Labor v. Johnson Controls, Inc., 15 BNA OSHC 2132 (Rev. Comm'n 1993) 
(recordkeeping violations continue until correction or expiration of 
the retention period). The Commission addressed this issue most 
recently in Secretary of Labor v. AKM LLC, 23 BNA OSHC 1414 (Rev. 
Comm'n 2011) (Volks I), confirming that an employer's failure to make a 
required OSHA record is a continuing violation, and that an uncorrected 
violation continues until the employer is no longer required to keep 
OSHA records for the year at issue.\2\
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    \2\ Although the Coalition for Workplace Safety stated that OSHA 
has never expressed a policy of treating recordkeeping violations as 
ongoing, Ex. 0013, OSHA's citation history--and the Commission 
decisions upholding those citations--make clear that OSHA took this 
approach for many years. See Martin v. OSHRC, 499 U.S. 144, 157 
(1991) (OSHA citations embody the Secretary's interpretation of 
regulations). See discussion in Section I.C, Background, above. 
Throughout this preamble, exhibit numbers are referred to in the 
form Ex. XXXX, where XXXX reflects the last four digits of the full 
document number (OSHA-2015-006-XXXX).
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D. The D.C. Circuit's Decision in Volks II

    A panel of the D.C. Circuit reviewed the Commission's Volks I 
decision, and on April 6, 2012, issued a decision--

[[Page 91795]]

Volks II--reversing the Commission. AKM LLC v. Sec'y of Labor, 675 F.3d 
752 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (Volks II). The majority opinion in Volks II, 
without discussion of Commission precedent to the contrary, held that 
the OSH Act does not provide authority for the Secretary to impose a 
continuing recordkeeping obligation on employers, explaining that ``the 
. . . language in [the OSH Act] . . . which deals with record-keeping 
is not authorization for OSHA to cite the employer for a record-making 
violation more than six months after the recording failure.'' Id. at 
758; see also id. at 756-57. The majority stated that OSHA must cite an 
employer for failing to record an injury or illness within six months 
of the first day on which the regulations require the recording; a 
citation issued later than that, according to the Volks II majority, is 
barred by the OSH Act's statute of limitations. Id. at 753-59.
    In a separate opinion concurring in the judgment in Volks II, Judge 
Garland disagreed with the majority's conclusion that the OSH Act did 
not permit continuing record-making obligations. Judge Garland agreed 
with the Secretary that the OSH Act does allow for continuing 
violations of recordkeeping requirements. He concluded, however, that 
the specific language in the recordkeeping regulations reviewed by the 
panel did not implement this statutory authority and did not create 
continuing recordkeeping obligations. Id. at 759-64. Under the analysis 
in Judge Garland's concurring opinion, OSHA in fact has statutory 
authority to create a continuing obligation for employers to make and 
maintain accurate records of work-related illnesses and injuries, and 
can revise its recordkeeping regulations to more clearly implement that 
statutory authority.
    Thus, because of the Volks II decision, OSHA has decided to clarify 
employers' obligations under its recordkeeping regulations and to 
elaborate on its understanding of the statutory basis for those 
obligations. OSHA disagrees with the legal holding in the majority 
opinion in Volks II, but agrees with Judge Garland that, while the OSH 
Act gives the Secretary authority to impose continuing recordkeeping 
obligations, the text of the recordkeeping regulations did not make 
clear OSHA's longstanding intention to fully implement that authority. 
Therefore, OSHA is changing its recordkeeping regulations to clarify 
that the duty to make and maintain an accurate record of a work-related 
illness or injury is an ongoing obligation that continues until the 
required record is made or until the end of the record-retention-and-
access period prescribed by the regulations. To that end, OSHA is 
revising the titles of some sections and subparts in part 1904 and 
changing the text of some of the recordkeeping requirements. OSHA 
describes the changes in SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION, Section III, later 
in this preamble.

E. Events Preceding This Final Rule

    On July 29, 2015, OSHA issued a proposed rule entitled 
``Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation to Make and 
Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness.'' 80 
FR 45116. Before issuing the proposal, OSHA consulted with the Advisory 
Committee on Construction Safety and Health (ACCSH). OSHA provided 
ACCSH with a summary and explanation of the proposal and a statement 
regarding the need for the proposed revisions to 29 CFR part 1904. On 
December 4, 2014, ACCSH voted to recommend that OSHA proceed with the 
proposal.\3\
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    \3\ The National Federation of Independent Businesses has 
requested that the transcript of ACCSH's meeting be added to the 
docket of this rulemaking. Ex. 0014. The transcript can now be found 
at Ex. 0030.
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    OSHA provided 60 days for public comment and eventually extended 
the comment period for an additional 30 days. 80 FR 57765. OSHA 
received a total of 30 comments. The comments are addressed elsewhere 
in this preamble.

II. Legal Authority

A. Overview

    As explained previously, in SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION, Section I.A, 
the OSH Act authorizes the Secretary of Labor to issue ``standards'' 
and other ``regulations.'' See, e.g., 29 U.S.C. 655, 657. An 
occupational safety and health standard, issued pursuant to section 6 
of the Act, prescribes measures to be taken to remedy an identified 
occupational hazard. Other regulations, issued pursuant to general 
rulemaking authority found, inter alia, in section 8 of the Act, 
establish enforcement or detection procedures designed to further the 
goals of the Act generally. 29 U.S.C. 657(c); Workplace Health and 
Safety Council v. Reich, 56 F.3d 1465, 1468 (D.C. Cir. 1995). This 
final rule amends OSHA's recordkeeping regulations issued pursuant to 
authority expressly granted by sections 8 and 24 of the Act. 29 U.S.C. 
657, 673. It simply clarifies existing duties under part 1904, and does 
not impose any new substantive recordkeeping requirements.
    Many commenters suggested that OSHA does not have legal authority 
to promulgate this rule. Exs. 0003, 0008, 0009, 0010, 0011, 0012, 0013, 
0014, 0016, 0017, 0020, 0021, 0023, 0026. OSHA disagrees. As recognized 
by Judge Garland in his concurring opinion in Volks II, and explained 
in more detail in SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION, Section II.B, later in 
this preamble, the OSH Act plainly authorizes this regulatory action. 
Numerous provisions of the OSH Act both underscore Congress' 
acknowledgement that accurate injury and illness records are a critical 
component of the national occupational safety and health program and 
give the Secretary broad authority to enact recordkeeping regulations 
that create a continuing obligation for employers to make and maintain 
accurate records of work-related illnesses and injuries. Section 
2(b)(12) of the Act states that one of the purposes of the OSH Act is 
to assure, so far as possible, safe and healthful working conditions by 
providing for appropriate reporting procedures that will help achieve 
the objectives of the Act and ``accurately describe'' the nature of the 
occupational safety and health problem. See 29 U.S.C. 651(b)(12). 
Section 8(c)(1) requires each employer to ``make, keep and preserve'' 
and to ``make available'' to the Secretary such records prescribed by 
regulation as necessary or appropriate for the enforcement of the Act 
or for developing information regarding the causes and prevention of 
occupational accidents and illnesses. See 29 U.S.C. 657(c)(1). Section 
8(c)(2) requires the Secretary to prescribe regulations requiring 
employers to ``maintain accurate records'' of, and to make periodic 
reports on, work-related deaths, injuries and illnesses. See 29 U.S.C. 
657(c)(2). Section 8(g)(2) of the Act generally empowers the Secretary 
to prescribe such rules and regulations as he may deem necessary to 
carry out his responsibilities under the Act. See 29 U.S.C. 657(g)(2). 
Section 24(a) requires the Secretary to develop and maintain an 
effective program of collection, compilation, and analysis of 
occupational safety and health statistics and to compile accurate 
statistics on work injuries and illnesses. See 29 U.S.C. 673(a). And 
Section 24(e) provides that on the basis of the records made and kept 
pursuant to section 8(c) of the Act, employers must file such reports 
with the Secretary as the Secretary prescribes by regulation as 
necessary to carry out his functions under the Act. See 29 U.S.C. 
673(e).

[[Page 91796]]

B. The OSH Act Authorizes the Secretary To Impose a Continuing 
Obligation on Employers To Make and Maintain Accurate Records of Work-
Related Injuries and Illnesses, and Incomplete or Otherwise Inaccurate 
Records Create Ongoing, Citable Conditions

1. Section 8(c) of the Act Governs Employers' Recordkeeping 
Obligations, and That Provision Authorizes the Imposition of Continuing 
Obligations on Employers To Make and Maintain Accurate Records of Work-
Related Illnesses and Injuries
    ``Whether [an] . . . obligation is continuing is a question of 
statutory construction.'' Earle, 707 F.3d at 307. The express language 
of the OSH Act readily supports a continuing violation theory in 
recordkeeping cases. And section 8(c) grants the Secretary broad 
authority to impose requirements he considers ``necessary or 
appropriate,'' including recordkeeping regulations that provide that an 
employer's duty to make records of injuries and illnesses is an ongoing 
obligation. 29 U.S.C. 657(c).
    Section 8(c)(2) requires the Secretary to prescribe regulations 
requiring employers to ``maintain accurate records'' of work-related 
deaths, injuries and illnesses. See 29 U.S.C. 657(c)(2) (emphasis 
added). And section 8(c)(1) requires employers to ``make, keep and 
preserve'' and to ``make available'' records that the Secretary 
identifies as necessary or appropriate for the enforcement of the Act 
or for developing information regarding the causes and prevention of 
occupational accidents and illnesses. See 29 U.S.C. 657(c)(1) (emphasis 
added). The language Congress used in these provisions therefore 
authorizes the Secretary to require employers to have on hand and to 
make available records that accurately reflect all of the recordable 
injuries and illnesses that occurred during the designated time period. 
Moreover, this statutory language is inconsistent with any suggestion 
that Congress intended the duty to record an injury or illness to be a 
discrete obligation that expires if the employer fails to comply on the 
first day the Secretary's regulations require recording.
    This is because the words ``accurate'' and ``maintain'' in section 
8(c)(2) of the Act connote a continued course of conduct that includes 
an ongoing obligation to create records. The word ``maintain'' means to 
``[c]ause or enable (a condition or state of affairs) to continue,'' an 
example being when one works to ensure that something stays ``in good 
condition or in working order by checking or repairing it regularly.'' 
https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/maintain?searchDictCode=all. Therefore, ``maintain'' plainly implies an 
ongoing action. See, e.g., Carey v. Shiley, Inc., 32 F.Supp.2d 1093, 
1103 (S.D. Iowa 1998) (``continuing duty to maintain records for'' the 
Food and Drug Administration). And ``accurate'' means ``conforming 
exactly to truth,'' and is synonymous with ``exact.'' https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/accurate. See also, e.g., Huntington 
Sec. Corp. v. Busey, 112 F.2d 368, 370 (6th Cir. 1940) (noting that the 
term `` `accurately' . . . in its ordinary use[ ] means precisely, 
exactly correctly, without error or defect''). Therefore, the OSH Act's 
direction to enact regulations requiring employers to ``maintain 
accurate [injury and illness] records'' is a mandate for the Secretary 
to impose an ongoing or continuing duty on employers to have true or 
exact documentation of recordable incidents. An employer cannot be said 
to have (or to be keeping or maintaining) accurate (or true or exact) 
records of injuries and illnesses for a particular calendar year if 
there are recordable injuries or illnesses that occurred during that 
year that are missing from those records. Put simply, the Secretary 
cannot fulfill the statutory obligation of ensuring that employers 
``maintain accurate records'' without imposing on employers an ongoing 
duty to create records for injuries and illnesses in the first place; a 
duty to maintain accurate records inherently implies an ongoing 
obligation to create the records that must be maintained.
    The Fourth Circuit recognized as much in Sierra Club v. Simkins 
Industries, 847 F.2d 1109, 1115 (4th Cir. 1988), a Clean Water Act 
case, when it refused to allow a company to defend against its failure 
to file and retain water sampling records on the ground that it never 
collected the data it needed to create the records in the first place. 
The court ruled that an ongoing duty to maintain records implies a 
corresponding, and continuing, duty to have those records, explaining 
that it would not allow the company ``to escape liability . . . by 
failing at the outset to sample and to create and retain the necessary 
. . . records.'' Id. See also, e.g., Big Bear Super Mkt. No. 3 v. INS, 
913 F.2d 754, 757 (9th Cir. 1990) (per curiam) (statutory and 
regulatory scheme described by the court as requiring companies to 
``maintain'' documents is interpreted to impose a ``continuing duty'' 
on those companies ``to prepare and make'' the documents in the first 
instance); Park v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue, 136 T.C. 569, 574 (U.S. 
Tax Ct. 2011) (noting that a party that did not create required records 
thereby failed to ``keep'' those records), rev'd and remanded on other 
grounds, 722 F.3d 384 (D.C. Cir. 2013).
    The ``make, keep, and preserve'' and ``make available'' language in 
section 8(c)(1) similarly envisions a continuing duty to record and 
provides additional support for the Secretary's interpretation of the 
``maintain accurate records'' language in section 8(c)(2). ``Keep'' is 
a synonym for ``maintain,'' https://thesaurus.com/browse/maintain, and 
both words imply a continued course of conduct, as does ``preserve.'' 
\4\ See, e.g., Powerstein v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue, T.C. Memo 
2011-271, 2011 WL 5572600, at *13 (U.S. Tax Ct. Nov. 16, 2011) 
(interpreting statutory and regulatory requirements to ``keep'' tax 
records to mean that taxpayers must ``maintain'' such records); 
Freedman v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue, T.C. Memo 2010-155, 2010 WL 
2942167, at *1 (U.S. Tax Ct. July 21, 2010) (same).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \4\ The legislative history of the OSH Act shows that Congress 
used ``keep'' and ``maintain'' synonymously. In a Senate Report, 
Congress described section 8(c)(2)--which talks about 
``maintaining'' records--as ``requiring employers to keep records of 
all work-related injuries and diseases.'' S. Rep. No. 91-1282, at 31 
(1970), reprinted in Subcomm. on Labor of the Comm. on Labor and 
Public Welfare, Legislative History of the Occupational Safety and 
Health Act of 1970, at 171 (1971) (emphasis added).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The fact that Congress included the word ``make'' in a phrase with 
two other terms that both call for a continuing action suggests that 
``make'' was also intended to signify a continuing course of conduct in 
the recordkeeping context. The most reasonable reading of section 
8(c)(1), particularly in light of the ``maintain accurate records'' 
language in section 8(c)(2), is that the phrase ``make, keep, and 
preserve'' authorizes one continuous recordkeeping requirement that 
includes both the creation and the keeping of records. See, e.g., Davis 
v. Michigan Dep't of Treasury, 489 U.S. 803, 809 (1989) (noting a 
``fundamental canon of statutory construction that the words of a 
statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in 
the overall statutory scheme''). The related authorization to the 
Secretary to prescribe such recordkeeping regulations as he considers 
``necessary or appropriate'' further emphasizes the breadth of the 
Secretary's discretion in implementing the statute.
    Thus, the Secretary does not believe that section 8(c) authorizes 
two and only two discrete duties: A duty to create a record that can 
arise at only one moment in time, and a duty to preserve

[[Page 91797]]

that record if it should be created. Such a view would be inconsistent 
with the most relevant provision of the Act, section 8(c)(2), which is 
the provision that specifically addresses the Secretary's authority to 
prescribe regulations for injury and illness recordkeeping, i.e., to 
prescribe regulations that require employers to ``maintain accurate 
records'' of workplace illnesses and injuries. Nothing about the 
Congressional direction to ``maintain accurate records'' is naturally 
read as creating two entirely discrete obligations, or as conveying 
Congressional intent to limit the duty to make a required record to a 
single point in time. Records that omit work-related injuries and 
illnesses are not accurate, and no purpose is served by maintaining 
inaccurate records. Instead, Congress intended employers, employees, 
and the Secretary to have access to accurate information about injuries 
and illnesses occurring in workplaces.
    The requirement in section 8(c)(1) that employers ``make 
available'' such records as the Secretary prescribes regarding injuries 
and illnesses further illustrates that section 9(c)'s statute of 
limitations does not limit the Secretary to acquiring only six months 
of accurate injury and illness data. A regulation requiring employers, 
if requested, to make available accurate records showing injuries and 
illnesses that have occurred within the past few years is on its face 
well within the OSH Act's grant of authority. Nothing in the statutory 
language suggests that the Secretary can only require employers to 
provide information regarding work-related injuries and illnesses that 
have occurred within the past six months. Such a limitation would 
cripple OSHA's ability to gather complete information and to improve 
understanding of safety and health issues, contrary to Congressional 
intent. Furthermore, the duty to make accurate multi-year records 
available upon request arises when the request is made, and the statute 
of limitations therefore does not begin to run until the request is 
made and the employer fails to comply.
    It therefore follows that section 8(c) of the Act authorizes the 
Secretary to enact regulations that impose a continuing obligation on 
employers to make and maintain accurate records of work-related 
illnesses and injuries. Not only are such recordkeeping regulations 
expressly called for by the language of section 8(c), but they are also 
consistent with Congressional intent and the purpose of the OSH Act. 
The Supreme Court recognizes a ``familiar canon of statutory 
construction that remedial legislation should be construed broadly to 
effectuate its purposes.'' Tcherepnin v. Knight, 389 U.S. 332, 336 
(1967). And reading the statute in light of its protective purposes 
further supports the Secretary's interpretation that the Act calls for 
treating the duty to record injuries and illnesses as a continuing 
obligation. See, e.g., United States v. Advance Mach. Co., 547 F. Supp. 
1085, 1090-91 (D. Minn. 1982) (requirement in Consumer Product Safety 
Act to ``immediately inform'' the government of product defects is read 
as creating a continuing obligation to report because any other reading 
would frustrate the statute's goal of protecting the public from 
hazards).
    The legislative history of the OSH Act also demonstrates that 
Congress wanted employers to have accurate injury and illness records 
both for the purpose of making workplaces safer and healthier and for 
the purpose of allowing the federal government to study the nation's 
occupational safety and health problems. As the House Committee on 
Education and Labor noted, before passage of the OSH Act it was 
impossible to know the extent of national occupational safety and 
health issues due to variability in state reporting measures; thus, 
Congress viewed it as an ``evident Federal responsibility'' to provide 
for ``[a]ccurate, uniform reporting standards.'' H.R. Rep. No. 91-1291, 
at 15 (1970), reprinted in Subcomm. on Labor of the Comm. on Labor and 
Public Welfare, Legislative History of the Occupational Safety and 
Health Act of 1970, at 845 (1971). See also 29 U.S.C. 673(a) (``The 
Secretary shall compile accurate statistics on work injuries and 
illnesses . . .''); Sec'y of Labor v. Gen. Motors Corp., 8 BNA OSHC 
2036, 2039 (Rev. Comm'n 1980) (``Examination of the legislative history 
of [sections 8(c)(1) and 8(c)(2)] . . . shows a clear congressional 
intent that th[e] reporting requirement be interpreted broadly in order 
to develop information for future scientific use.'').
    Some commenters, including the Coalition for Workplace Safety and 
the American Health Care Association, stated a concern that 
interpreting section 8(c) to authorize continuing violations means that 
OSHA is claiming unfettered discretion to essentially eliminate any 
statute of limitations for recordkeeping violations. Exs. 0011, 0013, 
0020. OSHA disagrees. OSHA's interpretation does not mean that the 
Secretary's authority is unconstrained. Under section 8(c)(1), the 
records the Secretary requires must be ``necessary or appropriate'' to 
enforcement of the Act or to gathering information regarding the causes 
or prevention of occupational accidents or illnesses. 29 U.S.C. 
657(c)(1). Under section 8(d), the Secretary must obtain information 
with a minimum burden on employers, especially small businesses, and 
reduce unnecessary duplication to the maximum extent feasible. 29 
U.S.C. 657(d). Moreover, under the Paperwork Reduction Act, the 
Secretary and the Office of Management and Budget must determine that a 
recordkeeping requirement will have practical utility and will not be 
unduly burdensome. 44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(3).
2. The OSH Act's Statute of Limitations Does Not Define OSHA Violations 
or Address When Violations Occur, Nor Does the Language in Section 9(c) 
Preclude Continuing Recordkeeping Violations
    As explained previously, it is section 8(c) of the OSH Act that 
authorizes the Secretary to establish the nature and scope of 
employers' recordkeeping obligations. The OSH Act's statute of 
limitations in section 9(c) deals only with the question of when OSHA 
can cite a violation; it says nothing about what constitutes a 
violation, or when a violation occurs. A violation is a breach of a 
duty, and the question of what duties the Secretary may prescribe must 
logically be dealt with prior to addressing the statute of limitations. 
Section 9(c) cannot be read as prohibiting the Secretary from imposing 
continuing recordkeeping obligations on employers covered by the OSH 
Act when the text and legislative history of the Act show that section 
8(c) authorizes the Secretary to create such obligations. Thus, the OSH 
Act's statute of limitations simply sets the period within which legal 
action must be taken after the obligation ceases or the employer comes 
into compliance. See, e.g., Inst. For Wildlife Prot. v. United States 
Fish & Wildlife Serv., No. 07-CV-358-PK, 2007 WL 4117978, at *6 (D. Or. 
Nov. 16, 2007) (declining to apply applicable statute of limitations to 
``nullify . . . [the government's] ongoing duty to designate critical 
habitat'' for an endangered species ``and . . . insulate the agency 
from challenges to any continued inaction'').
    Moreover, ``statutes of limitation in the civil context are to be 
strictly construed in favor of the Government against repose,'' 
Interamericas, 111 F.3d at 382 (citing Badaracco v. Comm'r of Internal 
Revenue, 464 U.S. 386 (1984) and E.I. Dupont De Nemours & Co. v. Davis, 
264 U.S. 456 (1924)), and nothing in section 9(c) precludes continuing 
violations in recordkeeping cases. To the contrary, the language in 
section 9(c)

[[Page 91798]]

is very general, providing only that ``[n]o citation may be issued . . 
. after the expiration of six months following the occurrence of any 
violation.'' 29 U.S.C. 658(c). The ``occurrence'' of something is not 
necessarily a discrete event; it can encompass actions or events that 
continue over time. For example, one dictionary defines ``occurrence'' 
as ``the existence or presence of something.'' https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-english/occurrence_2. See 
also, e.g., PECO Energy Co. v. Boden, 64 F.3d 852, 856-57 (3d Cir. 
1995) (scheme of repeated thefts over the span of six years constituted 
a single ``occurrence'' such that only one insurance deductible applied 
to the resulting loss). Similarly, the term ``occurrence of any 
violation'' in section 9(c) does not mean that an OSHA violation is 
necessarily a discrete event that takes place at one, and only one, 
point in time.
    Had Congress wanted the statute of limitations to run from the time 
a violation first occurred, it could have used language so stating. 
Indeed, Congress has used language more readily susceptible to that 
interpretation in other statutes. See, e.g., the Multiemployer Pension 
Plans Amendments Act, 29 U.S.C. 1451(f)(1) (statute of limitations runs 
from ``the date on which the cause of action arose''); the Federal 
Employers' Liability Act, 45 U.S.C. 56 (statute of limitations runs 
from ``the day the cause of action accrued''); the general statute of 
limitations governing civil actions against the United States, 28 
U.S.C. 2401(a) (claims barred unless ``filed within six years after the 
right of action first accrues'').
    This new rule is intended to clarify that if an employer fails to 
record an injury or illness within seven days, the obligation to record 
continues on past the seventh day, such that each successive day where 
the injury or illness remains unrecorded constitutes a continuing 
``occurrence'' of the ongoing violation. If the employer records the 
injury on the twentieth, thirtieth, or some later day, the violation 
ceases to occur at that point, and any citation would need to be issued 
within six months of the cessation of the violation. This position is 
entirely consistent with section 9(c). Neither OSHA nor the Commission 
nor any court has ever treated section 9(c) as precluding all 
continuing violations. Indeed, continuing violations are common in the 
OSHA context, with the Commission taking the position that violations 
of OSHA requirements, including recordkeeping violations, generally 
continue as long as employees are exposed to the non-complying 
conditions. See, e.g., Sec'y of Labor v. Arcadian Corp., 20 BNA OSHC 
2001 (Rev. Comm'n 2004) (violation of the OSH Act's general duty clause 
stemming from the unsafe operation of a urea reactor); Johnson 
Controls, 15 BNA OSHC 2132 (recordkeeping); Sec'y of Labor v. Safeway 
Store No. 914, 16 BNA OSHC 1504 (Rev. Comm'n 1993) (hazard 
communication program and material safety data sheets); Sec'y of Labor 
v. Yelvington Welding Serv., 6 BNA OSHC 2013 (Rev. Comm'n 1978) 
(fatality reporting); Cent. of Georgia R.R., 5 BNA OSHC 1209 
(housekeeping).\5\ Indeed, the Volks II panel also acknowledged that 
the duties to preserve records, to train employees, and to correct 
unsafe machines may continue. 675 F.3d at 756, 758. The OSH Act simply 
would not achieve Congress' fundamental objectives if basic employer 
obligations were not continuing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \5\ The American Petroleum Institute stated that the OSH Act 
limits continuing obligations only to ``physical hazards.'' Ex. 
0020. This assertion finds no basis in the statute or case law. In 
any event, access to accurate injury and illness records helps 
employers and employees address and avoid physical hazards. See 
Section II.B.3, Legal Authority.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    These cases reflect fundamental OSH Act principles. Safety and 
health standards are rules that require, inter alia, ``conditions.'' 29 
U.S.C. 652(8). The absence of a required condition violates the 
standard. It does not matter when the absence first arose or how long 
it has persisted. If a condition is required and is not present (e.g., 
a machine is not guarded or a hazardous materials container is not 
labeled), a violation occurs and a citation requiring abatement may be 
issued within six months of the observed noncompliance. This 
construction follows from the language of the Act and is essential to 
the Secretary's ability to enforce compliance. Accordingly, continuing 
obligations and violations are a regular occurrence under the OSH Act. 
Nothing in section 9(c), which applies equally to standards and 
regulations such as recordkeeping requirements, bars them.
    In addition, continuing violations have been found to exist under 
other laws with statutes of limitations that contain language similar 
to that in section 9(c) of the OSH Act. For example, in National 
Railroad Passenger Corporation v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101 (2002), the 
Supreme Court addressed the statute of limitations in Title VII of the 
Civil Rights Act of 1964, which precludes the filing of claims a 
certain number of days after the alleged unlawful employment practice 
``occurred.'' See 42 U.S.C. 2000e-5(e)(1). The Court concluded that the 
statute authorized application of a continuing violations doctrine in 
hostile work environment cases, holding that in such cases, an unlawful 
employment action can ``occur'' over a series of days or even years. 
Morgan, 536 U.S. at 116-20. Similarly, in Havens Realty Corporation v. 
Coleman, 455 U.S. 363 (1982), the Supreme Court found continuing 
violations of the Fair Housing Act, which at the time required the 
commencement of civil actions within 180 days ``after the alleged 
discriminatory housing practice occurred.'' And in Postow, 627 F.2d 
1370, the D.C. Circuit found a continuing violation of the Truth-in-
Lending Act, which, at 15 U.S.C. 1640(e), provides that actions must be 
brought within one year from the date of the ``occurrence'' of the 
violation. The language of section 9(c) of the OSH Act is at least 
equally receptive to continuing violations, since it allows citation 
within six months of ``the occurrence of any violation.'' 
``Occurrence'' of ``any'' violation is open-ended language that does 
not suggest that a violation can exist at only one moment in time.
    Notably, even the Volks II majority appeared to recognize that the 
word ``occurrence'' does not necessarily have a single fixed meaning, 
stating that ``[o]f course, where . . . a company continues to subject 
its employees to unsafe machines . . . or continues to send its 
employees into dangerous situations without appropriate training . . . 
OSHA may be able to toll the statute of limitations on a continuing 
violations theory since the dangers created by the violations 
persist.'' 675 F.3d at 758. The court also acknowledged that a 
violation of the record-retention requirement--through the loss or 
destruction of a previously-created record--is a violation that 
continues from the time of the loss or destruction until the conclusion 
of the five-year retention period. Id. at 756; see id. at 763 
(concurring opinion).
    Moreover, continuing violations have been found even under statutes 
of limitations that contain language that is arguably less receptive to 
continuing violations than section 9(c); courts implicitly recognize 
that the underlying legal requirement, not the statute of limitations, 
determines whether there is a continuing legal obligation. For example, 
courts have found continuing violations of various laws that are 
governed by the general five-year statute of limitations for criminal 
cases in 18 U.S.C. 3282(a), which requires initiation of an action 
``within five years . . . after

[[Page 91799]]

. . . [the] offense shall have been committed.'' See, e.g., United 
States v. Bell, 598 F.3d 366, 368-69 (7th Cir. 2010) (continuing 
violation of child support payment requirements), overruled on other 
grounds, United States v. Vizcarra, 668 F.3d 516 (7th Cir. 2012); 
Edelkind, 525 F.3d 388 (same); United States v. Are, 498 F.3d 460 (7th 
Cir. 2007) (crime of being found in the United States after deportation 
is a continuing violation).
    The D.C. Circuit has suggested that suits alleging a continuing 
failure to act are permissible even under the general statute of 
limitations governing civil actions against the United States (28 
U.S.C. 2401(a)), which provides that claims are barred unless ``filed 
within six years after the right of action first accrues.'' Wilderness 
Soc'y v. Norton, 434 F.3d 584 (D.C. Cir. 2006). In Wilderness Society, 
the court intimated, but did not decide, that an agency's failure to 
act in accordance with a statutory deadline for action was a continuing 
violation, such that a lawsuit to compel agency action would not be 
time-barred just because it was filed more than six years after the 
agency first missed the statutory deadline. The court explained that 
because the suit `` `does not complain about what the agency has done 
but rather about what the agency has yet to do,' '' it likely would not 
be time-barred. Id. at 589 (quoting In re United Mine Workers of 
America Int'l Union, 190 F.3d 545, 549 (D.C. Cir. 1999)). See also, 
e.g., Padres Hacia Una Vida Mejor v. Jackson, No. 1:11-CV-1094 AWI DLB, 
2012 WL 1158753 (E.D. Cal. April 6, 2012) (28 U.S.C. 2401(a) did not 
bar a claim based on EPA's ongoing failure to act on complaints of 
discrimination within regulatory deadlines). And the Fifth Circuit 
found continuing violations of the Bank Holding Company Act in a case 
governed by the general statute of limitations in 28 U.S.C. 2462, which 
requires actions to enforce civil fines, penalties, or forfeitures to 
be ``commenced within five years from the date when the claim first 
accrued.'' Interamericas, 111 F.3d 376. See also, e.g., Newell 
Recycling Co. v. EPA, 231 F.3d 204 (5th Cir. 2000) (finding a 
continuing violation of disposal requirements for polychlorinated 
biphenyls under the Toxic Substances Control Act in a case involving 
the general statute of limitations at 28 U.S.C. 2462); Advance Mach 
Co., 547 F.Supp. at 1085 (finding a continuing violation of the 
Consumer Product Safety Act in a case governed by 28 U.S.C. 2462); cf. 
Capital Tel. Co v. FCC, 777 F.2d 868, 871 (2d Cir. 1985) (per curiam) 
(deferring to FCC determination that company's ``actions constituted a 
`continuing violation' '' despite an applicable statute of limitations 
(47 U.S.C. 415(b)) requiring the filing of complaints ``within two 
years from the time the cause of action accrues'').
    Finally, concerns about stale claims have little bearing on OSHA 
recordkeeping cases. OSHA recognizes that statutes of limitations are 
designed to ``keep stale claims out of the courts.'' Havens Realty, 455 
U.S. at 380. They protect parties from having to defend against stale 
claims and ensure that courts are not faced with ``adjudicat[ing] 
claims that because of their staleness may be impossible to resolve 
with even minimum accuracy.'' Stephan v. Goldinger, 325 F.3d 874, 876 
(7th Cir. 2003). Claims generally are considered stale when so much 
time has passed that relevant evidence has been lost and witnesses are 
no longer available or do not have reliable memories of the relevant 
occurrence. Id. But ``[w]here the challenged violation is a continuing 
one, the staleness concern disappears.'' Havens Realty, 455 U.S. at 
380. And nothing about continuing violations in the context of OSHA 
recordkeeping violations undermines this general principle.
    The American Petroleum Institute cited an example of a case where 
the employer's recordkeeper had passed away by the time of the hearing. 
Ex. 0020. However, reliance on witness recollection is often not 
necessary in recordkeeping cases because one can ordinarily ascertain 
whether an injury or illness occurred, and what treatment was 
necessary, by looking at medical reports, workers' compensation 
documents, and other relevant records, even if the affected employee or 
other witnesses are no longer available. In fact, OSHA's Recordkeeping 
Policies and Procedure Manual, CPL 02-00-135 (Dec. 30, 2004), directs 
compliance officers to review medical records to determine whether an 
employer has failed to enter recordable injuries and illnesses on the 
OSHA forms. And with respect to whether the employer recorded the 
injury or illness, the only evidence the parties and the court will 
need are the employer's OSHA Log and Incident Report Forms, which 
existing regulations require employers to maintain for five years. 
Furthermore--and contrary to the comment by the American Petroleum 
Institute that staleness concerns primarily hurt employers (Ex. 0020)--
OSHA ultimately bears the burden of proving that a recordable injury or 
illness occurred and the employer did not record it. Therefore, the 
absence of documents and witnesses generally will be more prejudicial 
to OSHA's case than to the employer's defense. See Secretary v. Home 
Depot #6512, 22 BNA OSHC 1863 (Rev. Comm'n 2009) (vacating citation for 
failure to report employee fatality because Secretary did not provide 
sufficient evidence to establish fatality was work-related). And any 
limited staleness concerns that exist are outweighed by the fact that 
ongoing recordkeeping requirements are essential to fulfilling the 
purposes of the OSH Act. See generally Connecticut Light & Power Co. v. 
Sec'y of Labor, 85 F.3d 89, 96 (2d Cir. 1996) (``Consideration of 
limitations periods requires a fair and reasonable weighing of the 
conflicting concerns of the remedial intent of the [statute] . . . and 
the desire to keep stale claims out of the courts.'').
    Moreover, under this final rule, an employer's obligation is the 
same as under the current rule: To record injuries and illnesses within 
seven days and maintain the records for five years. The new rule simply 
clarifies that an employer cannot avoid the five-year maintenance 
requirement by failing to make the record in the initial seven days; 
rather, the obligation to make the record continues throughout the 
five-year maintenance period even if the employer fails to meet its 
initial obligation. Therefore, employers who record injuries and 
illnesses promptly, as paragraph 1904.29(b)(3) requires, will not face 
staleness concerns.
3. Incomplete or Otherwise Inaccurate Records of Work-Related Illnesses 
and Injuries Create an Ongoing Condition Detrimental to Full 
Enforcement of the Act
    OSHA records ``are a cornerstone of the Act and play a crucial role 
in providing the information necessary to make workplaces safer and 
healthier.'' Gen. Motors Corp., 8 BNA OSHC at 2041. As explained 
previously, in SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION, Section I.B, employers must 
give employees (as well as OSHA and BLS) access to injury and illness 
records. OSHA injury and illness records are designed to be used by 
employers, employees, the public health community, and the government 
to learn about the injuries and illnesses that are occurring in 
American workplaces. See ``Improve Tracking of Injuries and 
Illnesses,'' 81 FR 29623 (May 12, 2016). Accurate OSHA injury and 
illness records enable employers to identify, and correct, hazardous 
conditions, allow employees to learn about the hazards they face, and 
permit the government to determine where and why injuries are occurring 
so that

[[Page 91800]]

appropriate regulatory or enforcement measures can be taken. (See 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION, Section I.B, earlier in this preamble, for a 
full discussion of the purposes served by OSHA injury and illness 
records.) Thus, Congress viewed accurate records as necessary for the 
enforcement of the Act. 29 U.S.C. 657(c). Inaccurate or incomplete 
injury and illness records will leave all of the relevant parties 
underinformed, and thereby create an ongoing hazardous condition 
detrimental to full enforcement of the Act. The Commission has 
recognized as much. See, e.g., Gen. Dynamics, 15 BNA OSHC at 2131 n. 17 
(recordkeeping regulations ``clearly are safety- and health-related''); 
Johnson Controls, 15 BNA OSHC at 2135-36 (``[A] failure to record an 
occupational injury or illness . . . does not differ in substance from 
any other condition that must be abated pursuant to . . . occupational 
safety and health standards . . .'').
    Nor is there any meaningful distinction to be drawn between cases 
involving inadequate training or unsafe machines (which may also be 
seen as involving repeated affirmative acts, for example, sending 
untrained employees to work in hazardous conditions) and recordkeeping 
cases (involving failures to create and maintain accurate records of 
workplace illnesses and injuries). The lack of access--by employers, 
employees and OSHA--to accurate records is as much an ongoing non-
complying condition under the Act as is an untrained employee or an 
unguarded machine. Whether the condition was created by an act of 
omission or of commission, the condition is one that continues to 
violate the Act until it is abated.
    Moreover, under the system Congress established in the OSH Act, any 
distinction that can be drawn between action and inaction lacks legal 
significance. As the Commission recognizes, ``unlike other federal 
statutes in which an overt act is needed to show any violation, the OSH 
Act penalizes both overt acts and failures to act in the face of an 
ongoing, affirmative duty to perform prescribed obligations.'' Volks I, 
23 BNA OSHC at 1417 n.3 (emphasis in original). See also, e.g., Gen. 
Dynamics, 15 BNA OSHC at 2130 (``[T]he Act penalizes the occurrence of 
noncomplying conditions which are accessible to employees and of which 
the employer knew or reasonably could have known. That is the only 
`act' that the Secretary must show to prove a violation.''). That is 
why it is still a citable violation if an employer has left a hazardous 
machine unguarded for years--even though the employer has not done 
anything to the machine since first removing the guard. That is why it 
is a violation if an employer fails to label containers of hazardous 
chemicals or have safety data sheets on hand, regardless of how long 
the inaction persists or when it first occurred. And courts regularly 
find that a failure to act in accordance with an ongoing legal 
obligation constitutes a continuing violation. Such cases have included 
a lender's failure to make required disclosures to a borrower (Postow, 
627 F.2d 1370), a sex offender's failure to register with authorities 
(George, 625 F.3d 1124), a parent's failure to pay child support 
(Edelkind, 525 F.3d 388), an agency's failure to comply with statutory 
mandates and deadlines (Wilderness Soc'y, 434 F.3d 584), a company's 
failure to create and maintain water sampling records (Sierra Club, 847 
F.2d 1109), and a failure on the part of the government to act on 
complaints of discrimination (Padres Hacia Una Vida Mejor, 2012 WL 
1158753).
    Incomplete and inaccurate OSHA records therefore result in an 
ongoing non-complying condition--namely employers, employees, and the 
government being denied access to information necessary to full 
enforcement of the Act. This non-complying condition continues every 
day that the records are inaccurate.\6\
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    \6\ For this reason, Gabelli v. SEC, 133 S.Ct. 1316 (2013), 
cited by Nabors Drilling USA and the National Association of 
Manufacturers, is inapposite. Exs. 0010, 0026. Gabelli deals with 
the discovery rule, which pertains to whether a claim's accrual date 
should be extended until the plaintiff learns of the unlawful 
conduct. The discovery rule is not needed where, as here, the 
unlawful conduct is ongoing. In Gabelli, which involved a civil 
enforcement action under the Investment Advisers Act, the Supreme 
Court held that the five-year statute of limitations in 28 U.S.C. 
2462 ran from the date a fraud was complete, not from the date the 
government discovered the fraud. Gabelli does not stand for the 
proposition that the language in 28 U.S.C. 2462 precludes 
application of a continuing violation theory. Indeed, in Gabelli the 
government agreed that the alleged illegal activity ended more than 
five years prior to the filing of the complaint, so there was no 
issue about the duration of the violative conduct.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Additionally, the legislative history of the Act reflects Congress' 
concern about harm resulting to employees in workplaces with incomplete 
records of occupational injuries and illnesses. Most notably, a report 
of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public welfare stated that 
``[f]ull and accurate information is a fundamental precondition for 
meaningful administration of an occupational safety and health 
program.'' S. Rep. No. 91-1282, at 16 (1970), reprinted in Subcomm. on 
Labor of the Comm. on Labor and Public Welfare, Legislative History of 
the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, at 156 (1971) (emphasis 
added). Additionally, a report from the House of Representatives shows 
that Congress recognized ``comprehensive [injury and illness] 
reporting'' as playing a key role in ``effective safety programs.'' 
H.R. Rep. No. 91-1291, at 15 (1970), reprinted in Subcomm. on Labor of 
the Comm. on Labor and Public Welfare, Legislative History of the 
Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, at 845 (1971).
    Some commenters, including Nabors Drilling USA and the North 
American Insulation Manufacturers' Association, expressed the opinion 
that this rule will do nothing to improve safety and health. Exs. 0010, 
0016, 0017, 0019, 0026. For the reasons already stated, OSHA disagrees, 
and evidence submitted by other commenters supports OSHA's conclusion. 
For example, North America's Building Trades Unions commented that 
records of workplace injuries and illnesses are valuable to help 
identify hazards and correct problems in the workplace, both 
immediately and over time, and that this information is of particular 
value in the construction industry where workers change jobsites often. 
Ex. 0025. The United Steelworkers (USW) provided an example of a 
company safety committee noticing that the employer was not accurately 
recording hand lacerations caused by certain equipment; later, an 
employee using the same equipment suffered an amputation. Ex. 0028. 
Properly maintained records could have helped alert the employer to the 
hazardous machine before the amputation occurred. The USW also provided 
several examples of workplace hazards that emerge as trends over time, 
including occupational hearing loss, exposure to hazardous chemicals, 
and musculoskeletal disorders. Injury and illness records are an 
important tool in the identification of these types of hazards. Ex. 
0028.
    Additionally, as noted by commenter ORCHSE Strategies, LLC, 
although most employers are diligent about recording injuries and 
illnesses as required, some are not.\7\ Ex. 0015. OSHA's ability to 
enforce the recordkeeping regulations is an important tool to ensure 
that accurate information about workplace safety is

[[Page 91801]]

available and that conscientious employers are not placed at a 
disadvantage by employers who intentionally underreport and thus appear 
safer than they actually are. Ex. 0015; see Ex. 0024. Although OSHA's 
recordkeeping rules have always required employers to maintain records 
for five years, they did not previously expressly state that an 
employer cannot skirt this requirement by ignoring its obligation to 
record an injury or illness when first learning of it. This final rule 
clarifies the recordkeeping requirements and enables OSHA to ensure 
that employers make and keep an accurate, five-year record of workplace 
injuries and illnesses. Indeed, without this clarification, as the AFL-
CIO noted, the rule would not achieve Congress' intent that the 
Secretary collect accurate data about workplace safety. Ex. 0024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \7\ The USW suggested that OSHA incorporate into this rule a 
prohibition on employer practices that discourage reporting of 
injuries and illnesses. Ex. 0028. Such a prohibition would be beyond 
the scope of this rulemaking, which is limited to clarifying 
existing obligations. However, such practices are addressed in 
OSHA's recent rulemaking, ``Improve Tracking of Injuries and 
Illnesses,'' 81 FR 29623 (May 12, 2016).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

4. OSHA Is Acting Within Its Regulatory Authority, and Consistently 
With the General Case Law, in Issuing This Clarifying Rule
    Several commenters expressed the view that the Volks II majority 
opinion prohibits the Secretary from imposing a continuing obligation 
on employers to record, and maintain records of, injuries and 
illnesses, with a few commenters stating that OSHA is improperly 
attempting to ``overturn'' the Volks II decision. Exs. 0003, 0008, 
0009, 0010, 0011, 0012, 0013, 0014, 0016, 0017, 0020, 0021, 0023, 0026. 
OSHA disagrees. For the reasons described below, OSHA does not believe 
it is improper to respond to the Volks II decision by clarifying the 
regulations before there is any additional litigation over OSHA's 
statutory authority to establish continuing recordkeeping obligations.
    Given that OSHA agrees with Judge Garland that the regulations as 
previously written did not clearly convey the intended continuing 
obligation, it would have been fruitless for OSHA to seek further 
appellate review of the Volks II decision, as some commenters 
suggested. See Exs. 0017, 0020, 0021. The executive branch of the 
federal government may elect not to appeal an adverse decision from the 
judiciary for a number of reasons unrelated to its views about the 
merits of the ruling, and, as the Supreme Court recognizes, the 
government's decision to forgo appeal in a particular case should not 
foreclose future review of relevant issues in other appropriate 
judicial forums. See United States v. Mendoza, 464 U.S. 154, 160-61 
(1984) (declining to apply non-mutual collateral estoppel against the 
federal government in part because doing so ``would force the . . . 
[government] to abandon prudential concerns and to appeal every adverse 
decision in order to avoid foreclosing further review''). Thus, OSHA 
has acted reasonably in deciding to clarify its regulations before 
there is any additional litigation over the issues of statutory 
interpretation addressed in Volks II.
    OSHA acknowledges that this clarification of its recordkeeping 
regulations to address the textual deficiencies identified by Judge 
Garland leaves unsettled the issue of OSHA's statutory authority to 
regulate in this manner. (Two of three judges on the Volks II panel 
found that the OSH Act did not permit OSHA to issue continuing 
recordkeeping regulations; however, Judge Garland disagreed with the 
majority's holding on this point.) When OSHA implements this rule, that 
issue will likely be the subject of future litigation in various 
federal courts, and potentially in the Supreme Court. Courts generally 
recognize the value of allowing the law to develop through litigation 
in multiple forums. See, e.g., Mendoza, 464 U.S. at 160 (noting 
``benefit . . . from permitting several courts of appeals to explore a 
difficult question before this Court grants certiorari''); Califano v. 
Yamasaki, 442 U.S. 682, 702 (1979) (``It often will be preferable to 
allow several courts to pass on a given class claim in order to gain 
the benefit of adjudication by different courts in different factual 
contexts.''). See also Holland v. Nat'l Mining Ass'n, 309 F.3d 909, 815 
(D.C. Cir. 2002) (``Allowing one circuit's statutory interpretation to 
foreclose . . . review of the question in another circuit would squelch 
the circuit disagreements that can lead to Supreme Court review.'').
    OSHA has issued rules with a similar clarifying purpose following 
adverse court decisions before. For example, after the Fifth Circuit 
held that OSHA's respirator standard and the training provisions in the 
asbestos standard did not permit citing an employer for each individual 
employee who was not provided the required respirator or training, OSHA 
issued a final rule ``to make it unmistakably clear that each covered 
employee is required to receive PPE and training, and that each 
instance when an employee subject to a PPE or training requirement does 
not receive the required PPE or training may be considered a separate 
violation subject to a separate penalty.'' 73 FR 75568-01, 75569 (Dec. 
12, 2008); see Chao v. OSHRC and Erik K. Ho, 401 F.3d 355 (5th Cir. 
2005). See also 72 FR 64342-01, 64342-43 (Nov. 15, 2007) (final rule 
clarifying employers' responsibility to pay for PPE, issued in response 
to Commission decision vacating citation for employer's failure to 
pay).\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \8\ Nor is it uncommon for federal agencies to engage in 
nonacquiescence when faced with what they believe are erroneous 
court decisions. See, e.g., Samuel Estreicher & Richard L. Revesz, 
Nonacquiescence by Federal Administrative Agencies, 98 Yale L.J. 679 
(1989).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    OSHA also disagrees with the commenters, including the Coalition 
for Workplace Safety and the National Association of Home Builders, who 
suggested that a Supreme Court case, National Cable and 
Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U.S. 
967 (2005) (``Brand X''), precludes the Secretary from promulgating 
this final rule. Exs. 0011, 0013, 0017, 0020. In holding that the Ninth 
Circuit should have deferred to the FCC's interpretation of a statutory 
term instead of following the contrary interpretation the court had 
adopted in an earlier case, Brand X stated that ``[a] court's prior 
judicial construction of a statute trumps an agency construction 
otherwise entitled to Chevron deference only if the prior court 
decision holds that its construction follows from the unambiguous terms 
of the statute and thus leaves no room for agency discretion.'' 545 
U.S. at 982 (emphasis added). Brand X does not control here, however, 
because Volks II did not clearly hold that the OSH Act unambiguously 
forecloses continuing recordkeeping violations. Indeed, the court 
expressly acknowledged that the loss or destruction of a record 
previously made constitutes a continuing violation of the requirement 
to retain records for five years. 675 F.3d at 756; see id. at 763 
(concurring opinion). Moreover, although parts of the majority opinion 
suggest that the ``clear'' language in the OSH Act's statute of 
limitations precludes continuing record-making violations (because the 
majority said that the word ``occurrence'' requires a discrete action 
to have taken place within the six-month limitations period, 675 F.3d 
at 755-56), the court nevertheless acknowledged ambiguity in the 
meaning of ``occurrence'' when it agreed that training and machine 
guarding violations can continue, not because a discrete action occurs 
within the six-month window, but because ``the dangers created by 
th[ose] violations persist.'' Id. at 758.\9\ Notably, nothing in

[[Page 91802]]

the OSH Act's statute of limitations distinguishes between standards 
(such as machine guarding requirements) and regulations (such as 
recordkeeping requirements). Finally, the fact that Judge Garland 
disagreed with the majority about what the statute says lends further 
support to OSHA's view that Volks II should not be read as holding that 
the OSH Act unambiguously forecloses this regulatory action.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \9\ The Coalition for Workplace Safety also stated that the 
cases Local Lodge No. 1424 (Bryan Mfg.) v. NLRB, 362 U.S. 411 (1960) 
and Ledbetter v. Goodyear, 550 U.S. 618 (2007) prohibit this final 
rule. Ex. 0013. However, these cases do not control this rule 
because they involve causes of action that the Court found to accrue 
at one discrete moment in time--the illegal execution of a 
collective bargaining agreement and a particular instance of sex 
discrimination, respectively. In contrast, a failure to maintain an 
accurate record of workplace injuries and illnesses is a continuing 
violation that reoccurs each day it persists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    As touched upon previously in this preamble, OSHA further believes 
that general case law on continuing violations clearly supports a 
continuing violation theory for OSHA recordkeeping violations. The 
Volks II majority stated that recordkeeping violations are not ``the 
sort of conduct we generally view as giving rise to a continuing 
violation[,]'' i.e., the kind of violation ``whose `character as a 
violation . . . [does] not become clear until . . . repeated during the 
limitations period . . . because it is . . . [the] cumulative impact . 
. . that reveals . . . illegality.' '' Volks II, 675 F.3d at 757 
(quoting Taylor v. FDIC, 132 F.3d 753, 765 (D.C. Cir. 1997)). While the 
``cumulative impact'' theory is one way to establish a continuing 
violation (see, e.g., Morgan, 536 U.S. 101 (hostile environment claims 
under Title VII)), established precedent recognizes a second type of 
continuing violation--a violation that continues to occur on a day-by-
day (or act-by-act) basis and whose illegality was clear from the 
beginning. See, e.g., Edelkind, 525 F.3d 388 (failure to pay child 
support is a continuing offense); Sierra Club, 847 F.2d 1109 (finding 
continuing violations of the Clean Water Act where the company failed 
to comply with permit requirements for reporting and record retention); 
Postow, 627 F.2d 1370 (violation of Truth-in-Lending Act's disclosure 
requirements is a continuing violation). This is the type of continuing 
violation relevant here because all OSHA violations--including 
recordkeeping violations--``continue'' only insofar as non-compliant 
conditions exist.
    The D.C. Circuit explicitly recognized the existence of these two 
types of continuing violation cases in Earle, 707 F.3d 299, 1307--a 
post-Volks II case that made no reference to the Volks II majority 
opinion, but cited, with approval, Judge Garland's concurring 
opinion.\10\ In Earle, the court, quoting Judge Garland, explained that 
where a statute `` `imposes a continuing obligation to act, a party can 
continue to violate it until that obligation is satisfied and the 
statute of limitations will not begin to run until it does.' '' Id. at 
307. And ``[w]hether the obligation is continuing is a question of 
statutory construction.'' Earle, 707 F.3d at 307. The court explained 
that Postow had found a continuing violation of the Truth-in-Lending 
Act because the ``goals of the Act'' required construing the obligation 
to be continuing. Id. So too, the goals of the OSH Act require 
construing the recordkeeping obligation to be continuing. The purpose 
of recording injuries is to allow the recorded information to be used 
thereafter, throughout the retention and access period. Accurate and 
complete OSHA records enable employers, employees, and the government 
to understand the hazards present in the workplace so that corrective 
measures can be taken. Inaccurate and incomplete records, by contrast, 
are likely to be misleading.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \10\ It is also noteworthy that Earle was written by Judge 
Henderson, who was part of the Volks II majority.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The Secretary recognizes that one court has said that: ``The 
Supreme Court has made clear . . . that the application of the 
continuing violations doctrine should be the exception, rather than the 
rule.'' Cherosky v. Henderson, 330 F.3d 1243, 1248 (9th Cir. 2003) (not 
referring to any specific decision) (quoted in Volks II, 675 F.3d at 
757). Even so, the Secretary believes that the language and purposes of 
the OSH Act make it clear that the duty to maintain and make available 
records is a continuing obligation for all the reasons set forth 
previously.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \11\ In Toussie v. United States, 397 U.S. 112 (1970), the 
Supreme Court stated that ``the doctrine of continuing offenses 
should be applied in only limited circumstances since . . . `the 
tension between the purpose of a statute of limitations and the 
continuing offense doctrine is apparent.' '' Id. at 115 (citations 
omitted). But Toussie was a criminal case subject to the general 
principle that ``criminal limitations statutes are `to be liberally 
interpreted in favor of repose.' '' Id. (emphasis added and 
citations omitted). See also Diamond v. United States, 427 F.2d 
1246, 1247 (Ct. Cl. 1970) (per curiam) (``[T]he considerations 
moving the Court to decide [in Toussie] that the offense was not a 
continuing one were entwined with the criminal aspects of the 
matter, and the holding was limited to criminal statutes of 
limitations.''). In contrast, as noted previously, in Legal 
Authority, Section II.B.2, OSHA civil enforcement cases are subject 
to the opposing principle that ``statutes of limitation in the civil 
context are to be strictly construed in favor of the Government 
against repose.'' Interamericas, 111 F.3d at 382.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

III. Summary and Explanation of the Final Rule

    OSHA is amending its recordkeeping regulations, 29 CFR part 1904, 
to clarify that employers covered by the recordkeeping requirements 
have a continuing obligation to make and maintain accurate records of 
all recordable injuries and illnesses. This obligation continues for as 
long as the employer must maintain records for the year in which an 
injury or illness became recordable, and it does not expire if the 
employer fails to create a record when first required to do so.
    The continuing obligation to make and maintain accurate records of 
work-related illnesses and injuries is in accord with longstanding OSHA 
policy. Thus, this final rule does not impose new or additional 
obligations on employers covered by part 1904. Employers will not be 
required to make records of any injuries or illnesses for which records 
are not currently required; nor are the recording requirements 
themselves changing. Because the rule imposes no new burdens or 
obligations and changes no law, it is simply a clarification, not a 
substantive change (as a few commenters contended; see Exs. 0012, 0014, 
0020). As discussed at length previously, the amendments are meant 
simply to clarify employers' obligations in the wake of the Volks II 
decision. The amendments consist of revisions to various sections of 
the regulatory text as well as changes to the titles of some sections 
and subparts. (Titles are useful for clarity but do not change the 
legal meaning of the text itself. See Penn. Dept. of Corrections v. 
Yeskey, 524 U.S. 206, 212 (1998); INS v. Nat'l Ctr. for Immigrants' 
Rights, Inc., 502 U.S. 183, 189-90 (1991)).
    As discussed in more detail later in this preamble, the amendments 
clarify the following: (1) OSHA 300 Log. Employers must record every 
recordable injury or illness on the Log. This obligation continues 
through the five-year record retention-and-access period if employers 
do not create the record when first required to do so. During that 
period, employers must update the Log by adding cases not previously 
recorded and by noting changes to previously recorded cases. (2) OSHA 
301 Incident Report. Employers must prepare a Form 301 Incident Report 
for each recordable illness or injury. This obligation continues 
throughout the five-year retention-and-access period if employers do 
not prepare the report when first required to do so. Unlike with the 
Log, employers are not required to update the Incident Report

[[Page 91803]]

to show changes to the case that occur after the form is initially 
prepared. (3) Year-end records review; preparation certification; and 
posting of the Form 300A annual summary. These ancillary tasks are 
intended to be performed at particular times during each year. They are 
not continuing obligations.
    Many commenters expressed concern that this rule increases 
recordkeeping obligations and thus will require employers to devote 
additional time and resources to recordkeeping. Exs. 0008, 0010, 0012, 
0013, 0014, 0020, 0021, 0026, 0027. For example, Nabors Drilling USA 
commented that the new rule will force it ``to hire one or more 
individuals whose sole job will be to police our volumes of OSHA 300, 
300A, and 301 logs for accuracy one-hundred percent of the time,'' and 
the National Federation of Independent Businesses stated its belief 
that the rule imposes on employers ``a duty of daily reconsideration'' 
of each ``decision to not record or to not fully record an injury.'' 
Exs. 0010, 0014. This concern is misplaced. An employer's obligation 
remains the same as it was before: To record workplace injuries and 
illnesses within seven days and to maintain the record for five years. 
There is no new requirement to review or reassess existing records over 
the course of the maintenance period (and, correspondingly, there are 
no additional costs involved). The new rule simply makes clear that if 
an employer fails to record an injury or illness within seven days, it 
is not relieved of the requirement to make and keep an accurate record 
of all recordable injuries and illnesses for the duration of five 
years. As explained above in Section I.C, this has long been OSHA's 
position. In response to the observation in Volks II that a record 
cannot be maintained if it was never made, 657 F.3d at 756, the new 
rule is meant to explain that the obligations to make and maintain 
records go hand-in-hand. An employer cannot skirt the requirement to 
maintain accurate injury and illness records by failing to make the 
records in the first place.
    The commenters' concern about needing to regularly reassess 
recordkeeping determinations applies to only one type of recordkeeping 
violation--the type in which a well-intentioned employer simply makes a 
mistake and fails to record a recordable case (e.g., due to 
administrative oversight or because of an erroneous belief that the 
case is not recordable). The commenters' concern has no relevance to 
cases in which employers simply decide not to record cases they know to 
be recordable or in which employers have known, pervasive shortcomings 
in their recordkeeping policies and systems. See Ex. 0019 (comment from 
American Society of Safety Engineers). While inadvertent mistakes are 
always a possibility with respect to any regulatory obligation--whether 
discrete or continuing--OSHA generally focuses its recordkeeping 
enforcement resources on systematic recording failures, not on one-time 
errors made in good-faith attempts at compliance.\12\ See, e g., 
Secretary v. Pepperidge Farm, Inc., 17 BNA OSHC 1993 (Rev. Comm'n 1997) 
(affirming 176 willful recordkeeping violations where employer failed 
to train responsible employee on how to complete OSHA forms and failed 
to record dozens of injuries of a type that affected workers at ``an 
extraordinarily high rate''). And while employers are responsible for 
complying with the requirement to accurately record workplace injuries 
and illnesses and to maintain accurate records for five years, there is 
no separate requirement for daily (or regular) reconsideration of 
decisions not to record. Thus, even though OSHA may cite an employer 
for failing to record a recordable case, OSHA would have no basis for 
separately citing an employer for failing to reconsider prior 
recordkeeping determinations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \12\ OSHA notes, however, that an employer may be cited for an 
OSH Act violation as long as it has knowledge that the cited 
condition exists, whether or not the employer also has particular 
knowledge that the cited condition violates the Act. See, e.g., 
Secretary v. Shaw Constr., Inc., 6 BNA OSHC 1341 (Rev. Comm'n 1978) 
(finding employer in violation of trenching standard where employer 
knew trench was not sloped, even though employer was unsure which 
OSHA standard applied to the trench). Recordkeeping violations are 
no different from other OSH Act violations in this respect.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

A. Description of Revisions

1. Section 1904.0--Purpose
    OSHA received no comments on the proposed changes to Sec.  1904.0 
and has adopted the provision as proposed. OSHA has revised this 
section to clarify and emphasize employers' ongoing duties to make and 
maintain accurate records of each and every recordable injury and 
illness under part 1904. The revised language reflects the longstanding 
requirement for employers to provide their injury and illness records 
to certain government representatives and to employees and former 
employees and their representatives. The additions to the regulatory 
text include language reiterating that recordkeeping requirements are 
important in helping OSHA achieve its mission of providing safe and 
healthful working conditions for the nation's workers. OSHA also added 
a new sentence at the end of this section to explain that records will 
be considered ``accurate'' if correct and complete records are made and 
maintained for each and every recordable injury and illness in 
accordance with the provisions of part 1904. This concept is not new, 
as the requirement for employers to maintain accurate records is 
derived directly from the OSH Act, 29 U.S.C. 657(c)(2).
2. Subpart C--Making and Maintaining Accurate Records, Recordkeeping 
Forms, and Recording Criteria
    OSHA proposed to amend the title of this Subpart to better reflect 
the content of revised Sec. Sec.  1904.4 and 1904.29, which address 
employers' duties to make and maintain accurate records, as well as 
recordkeeping forms and criteria. OSHA received no comments on this 
proposed change and has adopted the change as proposed.
3. Paragraph (a) of Sec.  1904.4--Basic Requirement
    OSHA received no comments on the proposed changes to Sec.  
1904.4(a) and has adopted the changes as proposed. OSHA has revised 
this paragraph to reiterate the requirement that employers make and 
maintain accurate records of every injury and illness that meets the 
recording criteria in paragraphs (a)(1) through (3) of Sec.  1904.4. 
The prior version of paragraph (a), which required employers to 
``record'' injuries and illnesses, was less explicit in expressing 
OSHA's intent that employers both create and keep accurate records. The 
revised language confirms that an employer's duty includes both 
creating and preserving accurate records of recordable injuries and 
illnesses. To be accurate, these records must be correct and complete. 
The revised language also reflects more closely the language of the OSH 
Act at 29 U.S.C. 657(c)(1) and (2). OSHA did not propose to change, and 
is not changing, the recording criteria in paragraphs (a)(1) through 
(3) of existing Sec.  1904.4.
4. Note to Paragraph (a) of Sec.  1904.4
    OSHA proposed to add a note to Sec.  1904.4(a) to clarify the 
Secretary's longstanding position that the duty to make and maintain 
accurate injury and illness records continues throughout the entire 
record-retention period set out in Sec.  1904.33(a). This retention 
period runs for five years from the end of the calendar year that the 
records cover. An employer who fails to create a required record during 
the seven-day grace period provided for in Sec.  1904.29(b)(3) must 
still create the record so long as the retention period has not 
elapsed.

[[Page 91804]]

Given this ongoing duty, OSHA may issue recordkeeping citations to 
employers that have incomplete or otherwise inaccurate records at any 
point during the retention period, and, under the six-month statute of 
limitations set out in 29 U.S.C. 658(c), for up to six months 
thereafter.
    OSHA received a number of comments about its proposal to specify 
that the recordkeeping duty is a continuing one. These comments are 
addressed in Section II.B, Legal Authority, above. For the reasons 
stated there, OSHA has adopted the changes as proposed.
5. Paragraph (b)(3) of Sec.  1904.29--How quickly must each injury or 
illness be recorded?
    OSHA proposed to revise paragraph (b)(3) of Sec.  1904.29. The 
paragraph, as proposed and adopted in this final rule, states OSHA's 
longstanding requirement that each and every recordable injury and 
illness must be recorded on both the OSHA 300 Log for that year and a 
301 Incident Report within seven calendar days of when the employer 
receives information that the injury or illness occurred. OSHA is 
making minor wording changes to the first sentence of paragraph (b)(3), 
and the remainder of paragraph (b)(3), as proposed and adopted, is 
designed to make clear that employers who fail to record as required 
within seven days are not then relieved of the obligation to record. 
Thus, the obligation to record continues until the five-year retention 
period in Sec.  1904.33(a) has ended.
    North America's Building Trades Unions suggested that OSHA's use of 
the word ``deadline'' to refer to the end of the seven-day reporting 
period might cause confusion about whether the obligation continues 
after the ``deadline'' is missed. Ex. 0025. OSHA agrees and is removing 
this word in the final rule. OSHA has always interpreted the seven-day 
recording period as a grace period when an employer can gather 
information on an injury or illness without fear of being cited by OSHA 
for a failure to record. Similarly, OSHA has always interpreted the 
obligation to record as continuing throughout the record retention 
period. The amendments to this paragraph simply clarify OSHA's long-
held positions.
    Other comments disagreeing with OSHA's proposal to specify that the 
recordkeeping duty is a continuing one are addressed in Section II.B, 
Legal Authority, above. For the reasons stated there, OSHA has adopted 
the remainder of the provision as proposed.
6. Section 1904.32--Year-End Review and Annual Summary
    OSHA proposed to amend the title of this section to more accurately 
describe the topics covered by Sec.  1904.32, which include an 
employer's year-end review of records. OSHA received no comments on 
this proposed change and has adopted the change as proposed.
7. Paragraph (a) of Sec.  1904.32--Basic Requirement
    OSHA received no comments on the proposed changes to Sec.  
1904.32(a) and has adopted the changes as proposed. OSHA has revised 
paragraph (a)(1) of Sec.  1904.32 to make clear that employers must 
examine each year's OSHA 300 Log at the end of the year to ensure that 
each and every recordable injury and illness is recorded on the Log, 
and that each entry is accurate. If an employer discovers, during this 
review, that an injury or illness is missing or that any aspect of an 
entry is inaccurate, the employer must correct the deficiency.
    OSHA has added a new paragraph (paragraph (a)(2)) to Sec.  1904.32. 
This paragraph provides that after reviewing and verifying the Log 
entries under Sec.  1904.32(a)(1), employers must verify that all 
entries on the Log are accurately recorded on OSHA 301 Incident 
Reports. Paragraph (a)(2) clarifies that if an employer discovers, 
during the Sec.  1904.32(a)(1) review, that an injury or illness was 
initially left off of the OSHA 300 Log, the employer must both add it 
to the log and create an accurate Incident Report for that injury or 
illness.
    OSHA is moving the language from paragraph (a)(2) in Sec.  1904.32 
to paragraph (a)(3) in the same section. OSHA is adding a clause to 
that paragraph to explain that the annual summary should be created 
only after an employer verifies the accuracy of the Log. This language 
is for clarification purposes only and does not add any new compliance 
requirements. OSHA is also renumbering paragraphs (a)(3) and (4) of 
Sec.  1904.32 as paragraphs (a)(4) and (5), respectively. OSHA did not 
propose to make, and is not making, any substantive changes to these 
provisions.
    The specific tasks required of employers under Sec.  1904.32(a)--to 
conduct a year-end review of the Log, and to prepare, certify, and post 
the annual summary--are in addition to the duties described elsewhere 
in part 1904, and do not supersede or modify them. These other duties 
include the fundamental continuing obligation for employers to ensure 
that Logs are accurate and complete and that all recordable cases are 
included on them. The specific steps required under Sec.  1904.32(a) 
are supplementary tasks designed to help ensure that employers are 
maintaining accurate records. These supplementary tasks are to be 
performed at specified times (at the end of each calendar year, and 
from February 1 to April 30 for posting). Failure to perform one of 
these supplementary tasks by the required date or during the required 
time period is a violation of Sec.  1904.32 that may be cited during 
the following six months. See Volks II, 675 F.3d at 761-62 (concurring 
opinion).
8. Paragraph (b)(1) of Sec.  1904.32--How extensively do I have to 
review the OSHA 300 Log at the end of the year?
    OSHA received no comments on the proposed changes to paragraph 
(b)(1) of Sec.  1904.32 has adopted the changes as proposed. OSHA is 
amending paragraph (b)(1) of Sec.  1904.32 to reflect the revisions to 
Sec.  1904.32(a)(1). The changes to paragraph (b)(1) reiterate that 
employers must review the Log and its entries sufficiently to verify 
that all recordable injuries and illnesses for the relevant year are 
entered, and that those entries are accurate. In addition, OSHA is 
making one minor, non-substantive change to the heading of paragraph 
(b)(1).
9. Section 1904.33--Retention and Maintenance of Accurate Records
    OSHA proposed to update the title of this section to more 
accurately reflect the obligations described in Sec.  1904.33. OSHA 
received no comments on this proposed change and has adopted the change 
as proposed.
10. Paragraph (b)(1) of Sec.  1904.33--Other than the obligation 
identified in Sec.  1904.32, do I have further recording duties with 
respect to OSHA 300 Logs and 301 Incident Reports during the five-year 
retention period?
    OSHA proposed to amend the heading for this paragraph to reflect 
that employers have recording duties with respect to Incident Reports, 
as well as OSHA 300 Logs, during the five-year retention period. OSHA 
also proposed to amend the text of paragraph (b)(1) of Sec.  1904.33 to 
provide an introduction to the paragraphs that follow.
    OSHA proposed to add paragraphs (b)(1)(i) through (iii) to Sec.  
1904.33 to provide further guidance to employers on the duties to 
update Log entries and Incident Reports. Proposed paragraph (b)(1)(i) 
was designed to clarify employers' duties to make and keep OSHA 300 Log 
entries for each and every recordable injury and illness that occurs 
during the year to which the Log relates. There must also be an 
associated Incident Report for each illness and

[[Page 91805]]

injury recorded on the Log. As the proposed language made explicit, 
these duties continue until the five-year retention period ends; thus, 
an employer may be required to make an entry on the OSHA Log or fill 
out an Incident Report for an illness or injury that occurred several 
years ago, if the employer either just learned of the incident or 
failed initially to record as required upon learning of the incident.
    Proposed paragraph (b)(1)(ii) addressed changes that must be made 
to OSHA Logs throughout the retention period. As emphasized throughout 
this rule, employers' OSHA 300 Logs must be accurate. This means that 
if an employer discovers that any aspect of a previously-recorded case 
(such as the classification, description, or outcome of the case) has 
changed, or that a case was recorded incorrectly at the outset, the 
employer must amend the entry to reflect the new or corrected 
information.
    Proposed paragraph (b)(1)(iii) reiterated the requirement in 
paragraph (b)(1)(i) that there must be an Incident Report for each and 
every recordable injury and illness. The primary purpose of proposed 
paragraph (b)(1)(iii) was to explain that employers are not required to 
update or correct existing Incident Reports during the retention 
period. This principle was previously stated in Sec.  1904.33(b)(3).
    OSHA received a number of comments questioning its assertion that 
the proposed changes to paragraph (b)(1) of Sec.  1904.33 would not 
require anything new of employers. These comments are addressed below 
and in Section II.B, Legal Authority, above. The proposed language was 
intended not to change, but rather to state more clearly, what was 
already required under the recordkeeping rules. The prior recordkeeping 
rules provided that during the five-year retention period, the employer 
must update the Logs to include newly discovered recordable injuries 
and illnesses and to show changes that occurred in previously recorded 
cases. They did not explicitly state the employer's continuing duty to 
record cases it initially failed to record as required. Judge Garland's 
concurring opinion in Volks II concluded that the regulation was not 
worded explicitly enough to create a continuing obligation to record 
all such cases, as compared with newly discovered cases. Volks II, 675 
F.3d at 760-61.
    At the time OSHA amended the recordkeeping rules in 2001, it was 
well-established law in the Commission that employers had a continuing 
duty to record these previously unrecorded injuries and illnesses on 
their Logs. See Gen. Dynamics, 15 BNA OSHC 2122; Johnson Controls, 15 
BNA OSHC 2132. Nothing in the 2001 rulemaking suggested that OSHA had 
any intention of changing this fundamental requirement. The 2001 
recordkeeping regulations required employers to promptly record cases 
on the 300 Log, and, throughout the five-year retention period, to add 
to the Log newly discovered cases even if they occurred some time ago. 
These rules did not assume noncompliance; in other words, the rules did 
not explicitly state what an employer must do if it failed to record a 
case that was recordable. But by stating in the 2001 regulations that 
newly discovered cases should be recorded, the Secretary did not intend 
to signify that other cases the employer had learned about need not be 
recorded.
    The 2001 regulations also stated that employers were not required 
to ``update'' Form 301 Incident Reports. In Volks II, Judge Garland 
read this to mean that employers do not have to create a form at all, 
once the initial seven-day recording period is over. See Volks II, 675 
F.3d at 760-61 (concurring opinion). That was not the Secretary's 
intention. The intent was to distinguish between the Log, which 
employers must update to reflect new and changed information, and the 
301 Form, which employers do not need to update. (The Secretary 
explained that although updating the Log would provide useful, accurate 
information, updating Incident Reports would not enhance the 
information in the employer's records sufficiently to warrant the 
additional burden that would be associated with such a requirement. See 
66 FR at 6050, January 19, 2001.) That OSHA did not require employers 
to update Incident Reports did not mean employers were not required to 
create the forms in the first place. The language in the final rule 
clarifies this.
    For the reasons stated above and in Section II.B, Legal Authority, 
OSHA has adopted the proposed revisions to Sec.  1904.33(b)(1) without 
change.
11. Paragraph (b)(2) of Sec.  1904.33--Do I have to make additions or 
corrections to the annual summary during the five-year retention 
period?
    OSHA proposed minor changes to paragraph (b)(2) of Sec.  1904.33. 
These proposed changes were not substantive. The recordkeeping rules do 
not require employers to update or make changes to annual summaries 
during the five-year retention period. OSHA received no comments on the 
proposed changes to Sec.  1904.33(b)(2) and has adopted the changes as 
proposed.
12. Paragraph (b)(3) of Sec.  1904.33
    OSHA proposed to delete paragraph (b)(3) from Sec.  1904.33 and 
move it, in slightly modified form, to paragraph (b)(1)(iii) in Sec.  
1904.33. OSHA received no comments on this proposed change to the 
regulatory text and has adopted the change as proposed.
13. Section 1904.34--Change in Business Ownership
    Commenter Nabors Drilling USA observed that the language in the 
proposed rule might create confusion about the obligations of a new 
owner regarding the accuracy of the previous owner's injury logs. Ex. 
0010. To eliminate any potential confusion, OSHA is adding a sentence 
at the end of Sec.  1904.34 to clarify that when a business changes 
ownership, the new owner is not responsible for recording work-related 
injuries and illnesses that occurred before the change in ownership.
14. Paragraph (b)(2) of Sec.  1904.35--Do I have to give my employees 
and their representatives access to the OSHA injury and illness 
records?
    Paragraph (b)(2) of Sec.  1904.35 addresses employee access to 
records created under part 1904. OSHA proposed only one minor change to 
this paragraph--the addition of the word ``accurate'' to describe the 
records to which employees, former employees, and their representatives 
must be given access. Accurate records are described in Sec.  1904.0. 
OSHA received no comments on this proposed change to the regulatory 
text and has adopted the change as proposed.
15. Paragraph (b)(2)(iii) of Sec.  1904.35--If an employee or 
representative asks for access to the OSHA 300 Log, when do I have to 
provide it?
    In paragraph (b)(2)(iii) of Sec.  1904.35, OSHA proposed to add the 
term ``accurate'' to describe the OSHA 300 Logs to which employees, 
former employees, and their representatives must be given access. 
Accurate records are described in Sec.  1904.0. Records are required so 
they can be used, and records must be accurate if they are to serve 
this purpose. The duty to provide an accurate record upon request 
arises when the request is made, not before, so the six-month statute 
of limitations does not begin to run until the request is made.
    Nabors Drilling USA asked whether the change to Sec.  1904.35 
creates a private right of action by employees, former employees, and 
their representatives to pursue claims over recordkeeping. Ex. 0010. It 
does not. OSHA received no

[[Page 91806]]

other comments on the proposed change to Sec.  1904.35 and has adopted 
the change as proposed.
16. Subpart E--Reporting Accurate Fatality, Injury, and Illness 
Information to the Government
    OSHA proposed to revise the title of Subpart E to more precisely 
reflect the requirement in the Subpart that government representatives 
be given access to accurate fatality, injury, and illness information. 
OSHA received no comments on this proposed change and has adopted the 
change as proposed.
17. Section 1904.40--Providing Accurate Records to Government 
Representatives
    OSHA proposed to revise the title of Sec.  1904.40 to reflect the 
changes to paragraph (a) of that section. OSHA received no comments on 
this proposed change and has adopted the change as proposed.
18. Paragraph (a) of Sec.  1904.40--Basic Requirement
    OSHA proposed to add the term ``accurate'' to paragraph (a) of 
Sec.  1904.40 to reflect OSHA's longstanding expectation that employers 
provide government representatives with accurate records upon request. 
OSHA also proposed some non-substantive wording changes to this 
paragraph.
    Nabors Drilling USA suggested that OSHA revisit the four-business-
hour timeframe in which employers must provide requested records to 
government representatives. Ex. 0010. This suggestion is beyond the 
scope of this rulemaking because this final rule only clarifies, and 
does not change, existing obligations. OSHA received no other comments 
on its proposed changes to Sec.  1904.40(a) and has adopted the changes 
as proposed.

IV. State Plans

    The 28 States and U.S. Territories with their own OSHA-approved 
occupational safety and health plans must adopt a rule comparable to 
the amendments that Federal OSHA is promulgating to 29 CFR part 1904 in 
this final rule. The States and U.S. Territories with OSHA-approved 
occupational safety and health plans covering private employers and 
State and local government employees are: Alaska, Arizona, California, 
Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, 
New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, 
Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming. In 
addition, six States and U.S. Territories have OSHA-approved State 
plans that apply to State and local government employees only: 
Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New York, and the Virgin 
Islands.
    Under 29 CFR 1952.4(a), States with approved occupational safety 
and health plans under section 18 of the OSH Act (29 U.S.C. 667) must 
adopt recordkeeping and reporting regulations that are ``substantially 
identical'' to those set forth in 29 CFR part 1904. State plans' 
recording and reporting requirements for determining which injuries and 
illnesses must be recorded, and how they will be recorded, must be the 
same as the Federal requirements. 29 CFR 1952.4(a). State plans may 
promulgate injury or illness recording and reporting requirements that 
are more stringent than, or supplemental to, 29 CFR part 1904, after 
consulting with, and obtaining approval from, Federal OSHA. Id.
    State plans may not grant variances from injury and illness 
recording and reporting requirements for private sector employers; any 
such variances must be granted by Federal OSHA. 29 CFR 1952.4(b). And a 
State may grant such a variance for a State or local government entity 
only after obtaining Federal OSHA approval. Id.

V. Final Economic Analysis

    These revisions to OSHA's recordkeeping rules do not constitute an 
economically significant regulatory action under Executive Order 12866. 
(See 58 FR 51735, September 30, 1993). Executive Order 12866 requires 
regulatory agencies to conduct an economic analysis for significant 
rules. A rule is economically significant under Executive Order 12866 
if it will have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or 
more. This rule does not satisfy that criterion; as explained later in 
this preamble, neither the benefits nor the costs of the rule equal or 
exceed $100 million. OSHA has also determined that this rule does not 
meet the definition of a major rule under the Congressional Review 
provisions of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act 
(SBREFA). See 5 U.S.C. 804(2).\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \13\ Nor does this rule present a ``novel legal issue'' 
rendering it a significant regulatory action, as the Coalition for 
Workplace Safety suggests. Ex. 0013. The commenter states that the 
final rule presents such a novel legal issue because OSHA is 
``us[ing] a rule to overturn a U.S. Court of Appeals decision.'' As 
explained above in Legal Authority, Section II.B.4, OSHA does not 
agree with this characterization of the rulemaking. This rule is 
intended simply to clarify the meaning of the recordkeeping 
regulations following the Volks II decision, and the decision does 
not deprive OSHA of authority to promulgate this rule.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980, as amended by SBREFA in 
1996, requires OSHA to determine whether its regulatory actions will 
have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities. 
See 5 U.S.C. 601 et seq. OSHA's analysis indicates that the final rule 
will not have such an impact.
    This final rule simply reiterates and clarifies employers' existing 
obligations to record work-related injuries and illnesses. This rule 
does not require employers to make records of any injuries or illnesses 
for which records were not already required. Nor does the rule impose 
any new requirement that employers reconsider or reassess records once 
they have been made; employers remain subject to the existing 
requirement that they ensure the accuracy and completeness of their 300 
Logs. OSHA estimated the costs of these requirements as part of the 
final recordkeeping rule issued in January of 2001, see 66 FR 6081-
6120, January 19, 2001. The revisions contained in this final rule 
impose no new cost burden because they do not require employers to do 
anything new.
    A number of commenters stated their belief that the final rule will 
impose additional costs because it requires employers to reassess, or 
``think about,'' each record of a workplace injury or illness 
repeatedly over the course of five full years. Exs. 0008, 0010, 0012, 
0013, 0020, 0021, 0026, 0027. The National Federation of Independent 
Businesses estimated, ``conservatively,'' that this rule will cost the 
economy $1,933,710,222 over five years, assuming each employer has one 
``unrecorded or partially-recorded injury.'' \14\ Ex. 0014. This 
concern is misplaced. An employer's obligations remain the same as they 
have always been under the recordkeeping rules: To record workplace 
injuries and illnesses within seven days of when it learns of them and 
to maintain the records for five years. The final rule does not contain 
any new requirement to review or reassess existing records over the 
course of the maintenance period (see Section III, SUMMARY AND 
EXPLANATION, above); it simply

[[Page 91807]]

makes clear that if an employer fails to record an injury or illness 
within seven days of learning about it, it is not relieved of the 
requirement to have and keep an accurate record of all recordable 
injuries and illnesses for the duration of five years. Because the 
final rule imposes no new requirement for review of records, there are 
no additional costs involved for the time it would take to conduct such 
review. Moreover, there is no evidence in the record that employers 
have ever incurred meaningful costs (let alone costs on the level of 
those described by the National Federation of Independent Businesses) 
for regularly reassessing or ``thinking about'' their records--either 
in the many years before the Volks II decision when OSHA was enforcing 
recordkeeping requirements in a manner consistent with the 
clarification contained in this final rule, or after the decision, when 
it is undisputed that the Secretary may cite an employer for a failure-
to-record at any time within the six-month period following a 
violation. Therefore, there is no reason to think employers will incur 
such costs now.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \14\ To arrive at this number, the commenter assumed that 
``daily reconsideration'' would take one minute per day per 
unrecorded or partially recorded injury or illness, and then 
multiplied one minute per day by 365 days per year by five years 
(minus seven days for the regulatory grace period) by an estimated 
1,365,985 covered businesses by $46.72 per hour. Ex. 0014. In 
addition to assuming a requirement for daily reconsideration that 
the rule does not impose, this calculation does not account for the 
fact that concerns about reassessment will apply to only a subset of 
all recordkeeping cases. See discussion in Section III, SUMMARY AND 
EXPLANATION, above.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Even if these revisions to OSHA's recordkeeping rules would result 
in some costs beyond those OSHA estimated in 2001, any such costs would 
be nominal. According to OSHA's 2016 request to the Office of 
Management and Budget for an extension of the approval of the 
information collection requirements in the recordkeeping rules, an 
estimated 1.99 million injuries and illnesses must be recorded on OSHA 
logs each year. See https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAViewICR?ref_nbr=201604-1218-002.\15\ Although OSHA accounted for the 
costs associated with full recordkeeping compliance as part of the 2001 
rulemaking, and finds that this rulemaking will impose no additional 
costs on employers, OSHA will assume, for the sake of this analysis, 
that this rule will lead to the recording of a small number of 
recordable cases (one percent of all recordable cases) that would not 
have been recorded previously. In other words, OSHA will calculate the 
costs that would be imposed even if an additional 19,900 injuries and 
illnesses will be recorded as a result of the final rule. (OSHA took 
the same approach in its preliminary economic analysis, although there 
OSHA referred to this as an assumption involving a one-percent rate of 
noncompliance. OSHA believes the terminology it used in the proposal 
led to some confusion, so it has clarified its approach for purposes of 
this final rule.) \16\ OSHA also will examine a sensitivity analysis of 
the results assuming that this rule will lead to the recording of an 
even larger number of cases (5 percent of recordable injuries and 
illnesses).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \15\ The National Association of Manufacturers objected that BLS 
estimates of recordable injuries are larger than OSHA's estimate of 
the total injuries that must be recorded. Ex. 0026. This is correct, 
but not all employers are required to record their injuries. See 29 
CFR 1904.1, 2 (describing exemptions for employers with 10 or fewer 
employees and those in certain industries). OSHA only uses BLS 
recordable injury estimates for those industries required to record 
injuries.
    \16\ Nabors Drilling USA commented that if OSHA is correct that 
99% of employers already fully comply with the recordkeeping 
requirements, this final rule serves no purpose. Ex. 0010. As 
explained above, however, OSHA is not suggesting that 99% of 
employers are in full compliance with OSHA recordkeeping 
requirements. In any event, unlike most OSHA rulemakings, this final 
rule is not intended to change employers' behavior, but rather is 
designed to clarify OSHA's requirements. Thus, the current rate of 
recordkeeping compliance is unrelated to the need for this final 
rule.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The National Association of Manufacturers questioned OSHA's 
preliminary economic analysis, suggesting that OSHA's one-percent and 
five-percent assumptions were too low. Ex. 0026. OSHA believes, 
however, that the true costs associated with this final rule are zero, 
and is using the one-percent and five-percent assumptions simply to 
demonstrate that even if this rule leads to the recording of some 
additional injuries and illnesses, any costs incurred by employers as a 
result will be minimal.
    In 2014, OSHA prepared a Final Economic Analysis for a final rule 
addressing the industries entitled to a partial exemption from 
recordkeeping requirements and the reporting of injuries and fatalities 
to OSHA. In that analysis, OSHA estimated that it takes .38 of an hour 
to record an injury or illness on all required OSHA forms, taking into 
account requirements for providing access to records. See 79 FR 56130, 
56165 (September 18, 2014). And according to the 2016 Information 
Collection Request (ICR), the average hourly rate for an Occupational 
Health and Safety Specialist (Standard Occupational Classification code 
29-9011) is estimated to be $48.78 (which includes a 43% addition for 
benefits). See https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAViewICR?ref_nbr=201604-1218-002. This means that the total estimated 
cost of preparing OSHA records is $18.54 per injury or illness. The 
American Society of Safety Engineers and the National Association of 
Manufacturers questioned these estimates of time and cost as too low. 
Exs. 0019, 0026. OSHA stands by these estimates, however, as they have 
been developed carefully through multiple notice and comment 
rulemakings and Paperwork Reduction Act notices. Those who believe OSHA 
underestimated these values are failing to recognize that not all costs 
of investigating an accident are attributable to OSHA's recordkeeping 
requirements. Much of the same information has to be collected for 
workers' compensation purposes. To avoid overlapping paperwork, OSHA 
allows, and many employers take advantage of, the option to use 
equivalent workers' compensation forms in place of OSHA's recordkeeping 
forms. See 29 CFR 1904.29(a), (b)(4).
    Thus, if 19,900 cases will be recorded as a result of the final 
rule, the total cost associated with this regulatory action will be 
19,900 times $18.54, or approximately $368,946 per year. And if OSHA 
makes the even more conservative assumption that 5 percent of 1.99 
million injuries and illnesses (99,500) would be recorded as a result 
of the final rule, the total estimated cost of the rule, across all 
affected employers, would be under $1.85 million per year. Even this 
hypothetical cost would only exist if employers are not currently 
complying fully with the existing rule, but increase their compliance 
as a result of this clarification.
    Just as there are no (or minimal) new costs associated with this 
rule, the rule will result in no new economic benefits. OSHA believes 
the revisions to the recordkeeping rules are technologically feasible 
because they do not require employers to perform any actions that they 
were not already performing under existing requirements. And because 
the rule does not impose any significant new compliance costs, OSHA 
deems it economically feasible.

VI. Regulatory Flexibility Certification

    In accordance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act, 5 U.S.C. 601 et 
seq. (as amended), OSHA examined the regulatory requirements of the 
final rule to determine if they would have a significant economic 
impact on a substantial number of small entities. As indicated in 
Section V, Final Economic Analysis, earlier in this preamble, the rule 
is expected to have no effect, or at most a nominal effect, on 
compliance costs and regulatory burden for employers, whether large or 
small. Accordingly, OSHA certifies that the rule will not have a 
significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.

VII. Environmental Impact Assessment

    OSHA has reviewed the final rule in accordance with the 
requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act

[[Page 91808]]

(NEPA) (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.), the regulations of the Council on 
Environmental Quality (40 CFR parts 1500 through 1508), and the 
Department of Labor's NEPA procedures (29 CFR part 11). OSHA finds that 
the revisions included in the rule will have no major negative impact 
on air, water, or soil quality, plant or animal life, the use of land 
or other aspects of the environment. And recordkeeping and reporting 
requirements normally qualify for categorical exclusion from NEPA 
requirements in any event. See 29 CFR 11.10(a).

VIII. Federalism

    OSHA reviewed this final rule in accordance with the most recent 
Executive Order on Federalism (Executive Order 13132, 64 FR 43255, 
August 10, 1999). This Executive Order requires that Federal agencies, 
to the extent possible, refrain from limiting State policy options, 
consult with States prior to taking any actions that would restrict 
State policy options, and take such actions only when clear 
constitutional authority exists and the problem is national in scope. 
Executive Order 13132 provides for preemption of State law only with 
the expressed consent of Congress. Any such preemption must be limited 
to the extent possible. Because this rulemaking action involves a 
regulation that is not an occupational safety and health standard under 
section 6 of the OSH Act, it does not preempt State law. See 29 U.S.C. 
667(a). The effect of a final rule on states and territories with OSHA-
approved occupational safety and health plans is discussed previously 
in Section IV, State Plans.

IX. Unfunded Mandates

    OSHA cannot enforce compliance with its regulations or standards on 
``any State or political subdivision of a State.'' 29 U.S.C. 652(5). 
Under voluntary agreement with OSHA, some States enforce compliance 
with their State standards on public sector entities, and these 
agreements specify that these State standards must be equivalent to 
OSHA standards. But the final rule does not involve any unfunded 
mandates being imposed on any State or local government entity. 
Moreover, as discussed previously, OSHA estimates that there are no, or 
minimal, compliance costs associated with the rule. Therefore, this 
rule will not impose a Federal mandate on the private sector in excess 
of $100 million in expenditures in any one year. Thus, OSHA certifies 
that this final rule is not a significant regulatory action within the 
meaning of Section 202 of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (2 U.S.C. 
1532).

X. Consultation and Coordination With Indian Tribal Governments

    OSHA reviewed this rule in accordance with Executive Order 13175 
(65 FR 67249, November 6, 2000) and determined that it does not have 
``tribal implications'' as defined in that order. The rule does not 
have substantial direct effects on one or more Indian tribes, on the 
relationship between the Federal government and Indian tribes, or on 
the distribution of power and responsibilities between the Federal 
government and Indian tribes.

XI. Office of Management and Budget Review Under the Paperwork 
Reduction Act of 1995

    The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA) (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.) 
and OMB regulations (5 CFR part 1320) require agencies to obtain 
approval from OMB before conducting any collection of information. The 
PRA defines a ``collection of information'' as ``the obtaining, causing 
to be obtained, soliciting, or requiring the disclosure to third 
parties or the public of facts or opinions by or for an agency 
regardless of form or format'' (44 U.S.C. 3502(3)(A)).
    OSHA's existing recordkeeping forms consist of the OSHA 300 Log, 
the 300A Summary, and the 301 Incident Report. These forms are 
contained in the Information Collection Request (ICR) titled 29 CFR 
part 1904, Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, 
which OMB approved under OMB Control Number 1218-0176 (expiration date 
01/31/2018).
    In accordance with the PRA, OSHA solicited public comments on the 
July 29, 2015 proposed rule. The proposed rule also invited the public 
to submit comments to OMB and OSHA on the proposed collections of 
information with regard to the following:
     Whether the proposed collections of information are 
necessary for the proper performance of the Agency's functions, 
including whether the information is useful;
     The accuracy of OSHA's estimate of the burden (time and 
cost) of the collections of information, including the validity of the 
methodology and assumptions used;
     The quality, utility, and clarity of the information 
collected; and
     Ways to minimize the compliance burden on employers, for 
example, by using automated or other technological techniques for 
collecting and transmitting information.
    Because the proposal simply reiterated and clarified employers' 
existing obligations to record and maintain work-related injuries and 
illnesses and did not add any new collection of information, the Agency 
maintained the existing burden hour and cost estimates in the Recording 
and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses Information 
Collection Request. The Department also submitted this ICR to OMB for 
review in accordance with 44 U.S.C. 3507(d) on July 29, 2015. On 
October 7, 2015, OMB withheld approval of the revised ICR and issued a 
Notice of Action (NOA) stating that prior to publication of the final 
rule, the agency should provide a summary of any comments related to 
the information collection and their response, including any changes 
made to the ICR as a result of comments. In addition, the agency must 
enter the correct burden estimates (see https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/DownloadNOA?requestID=266192).
    The final rule adds no new compliance obligations. The rule simply 
reiterates and clarifies employers' existing obligations to record 
work-related injuries and illnesses; it does not require employers to 
make records of any injuries or illnesses for which records were not 
already required. Nor does the rule impose any new requirement that 
employers reconsider or reassess records once they have been made; 
employers remain subject to the existing requirement that they ensure 
the accuracy and completeness of their 300 Logs. These revisions impose 
no new cost burden because they do not require employers to do anything 
new. The Department of Labor has submitted a final ICR to OMB 
maintaining the existing burden hours and cost estimates. A copy of 
this ICR is available at https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAViewICR?ref_nbr=201610-1218-003. OSHA will publish a separate notice 
in the Federal Register that will announce OMB results of that review. 
OSHA notes that a Federal agency cannot conduct or sponsor a collection 
of information unless it is approved by OMB under the PRA, and the 
collection of information notice displays a currently valid OMB control 
number (44 U.S.C. 3507(a)(3)). Also, notwithstanding any other 
provision of law, no employer shall be subject to penalty for failing 
to comply with a collection of information if the collection of 
information does not display a currently valid OMB control number (44 
U.S.C. 3512).
    OSHA received comments relating to the estimated time necessary to 
meet the paperwork requirements of the proposed changes published in 
the July

[[Page 91809]]

29, 2015 proposed rule. A number of commenters stated their belief that 
the rule will impose additional costs because it requires employers to 
reassess, or ``think about,'' each record of a workplace injury or 
illness repeatedly over the course of five full years. Ex. 0008, 0010, 
0012, 0013, 0020, 0021, 0026, 0027. This concern is misplaced. An 
employer's obligations remain the same as they are under the existing 
rule: To record workplace injuries and illnesses within seven days of 
when it learns of them and to maintain accurate records for five years. 
The final rule does not contain any new requirement to review or 
reassess existing records over the course of the maintenance period; it 
simply makes clear that if an employer fails to record an injury or 
illness within seven days of learning about it, it is not relieved of 
the requirement to have and keep an accurate record of all recordable 
injuries and illnesses for the duration of five years. Because the 
final rule imposes no new requirement for review of records, there are 
no additional costs involved for the time it would take to conduct such 
review.
    OSHA estimates that it takes .38 of an hour to record an injury or 
illness on all required OSHA forms, taking into account requirements 
for providing access to records. The average hourly rate for an 
Occupational Health and Safety Specialist (Standard Occupational 
Classification code 29-9011) is estimated to be $48.78 (which includes 
a 43% addition for benefits). This means that the total estimated cost 
of preparing OSHA records is $18.54 per injury or illness. The American 
Society of Safety Engineers and the National Association of 
Manufacturers questioned these estimates of time and cost as too low. 
Exs. 0019, 0026. OSHA stands by these estimates, however, as they have 
been developed carefully through multiple notice and comment 
rulemakings and Paperwork Reduction Act notices. Not all costs of 
investigating an accident are attributable to OSHA's recordkeeping 
requirements. Much of the same information has to be collected for 
workers' compensation purposes. To avoid overlapping paperwork, OSHA 
allows, and many employers take advantage of, the option to use 
equivalent workers' compensation forms in place of OSHA's recordkeeping 
forms. See 29 CFR 1904.29(a), (b)(4).
    As required by 5 CFR 1320.5(a)(1)(iv) and 1320.8(d)(2), the 
following paragraphs provide information about this ICR.
    1. Title: 29 CFR part 1904 Recording and Reporting Occupational 
Injuries and Illnesses.
    2. Number of respondents: Approximately 640,000 employers with 
1,300,000 establishments are regularly required to maintain the forms.
    3. Frequency of responses: Annually.
    4. Number of responses: Approximately 1.99 million injury and 
illness cases are recorded on the OSHA forms.
    5. Average time per response: Time required completing and 
maintaining an entry (other than a needlestick) on the OSHA Form 300 
ranges from 5 minutes to 30 minutes and averages 14 minutes. Time 
required completing an entry on the OSHA 301 averages 22 minutes. OSHA 
estimates 40% of recordable cases are recorded on form 301.
    6. Estimated total burden hours: The final rule adds no new 
compliance obligations and does not require employers to make records 
of any injuries or illnesses for which records are not currently 
required to be made. The current total burden hours for the 
recordkeeping (part 1904) ICR are 2,525,458.
    7. Estimated costs (capital-operation and maintenance): There are 
no capital costs for the proposed information collection.

List of Subjects in 29 CFR Part 1904

    Health statistics, Occupational safety and health, Safety, 
Reporting and recordkeeping requirements, State plans.

Authority and Signature

    This document was prepared under the direction of David Michaels, 
Ph.D., MPH, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and 
Health, U.S. Department of Labor. It is issued pursuant to 29 U.S.C. 
657, 673; 5 U.S.C. 553; and Secretary of Labor's Order No. 1-2012 (77 
FR 3912, January 25, 2012).

David Michaels,
Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health.

    Accordingly, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration 
amends part 1904 of title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations as 
follows:

PART 1904--RECORDING AND REPORTING OCCUPATIONAL INJURIES AND 
ILLNESSES

0
1. Revise the authority citation for part 1904 to read as follows:

    Authority:  29 U.S.C. 657, 658, 660, 666, 669, 673, Secretary of 
Labor's Order No. 3-2000 (65 FR 50017), or 1-2012 (77 FR 3912), and 
5 U.S.C. 553.


0
2. Revise Sec.  1904.0 to read as follows:


Sec.  1904.0   Purpose.

    The purpose of this rule (part 1904) is to require employers to 
make and maintain accurate records of and report work-related 
fatalities, injuries, and illnesses, and to make such records available 
to the Government and to employees and their representatives so that 
they can be used to secure safe and healthful working conditions. For 
purposes of this part, accurate records are records of each and every 
recordable injury and illness that are made and maintained in 
accordance with the requirements of this part.

    Note to Sec.  1904.0: Recording or reporting a work-related 
injury, illness, or fatality does not mean that the employer or 
employee was at fault, that an OSHA rule has been violated, or that 
the employee is eligible for workers' compensation or other 
benefits.

Subpart C--Making and Maintaining Accurate Records, Recordkeeping 
Forms, and Recording Criteria

0
3. Revise the heading of subpart C to read as set forth above.

0
4. In Sec.  1904.4, revise paragraph (a) introductory text and add a 
note to Sec.  1904.4(a) to read as follows:


Sec.  1904.4   Recording criteria.

    (a) Basic requirement. Each employer required by this part to keep 
records of fatalities, injuries, and illnesses must, in accordance with 
the requirements of this part, make and maintain an accurate record of 
each and every fatality, injury, and illness that:
* * * * *

    Note to Sec.  1904.4(a): This obligation to make and maintain an 
accurate record of each and every recordable fatality, injury, and 
illness continues throughout the entire record retention period 
described in Sec.  1904.33.

* * * * *

0
5. Revise Sec.  1904.29(b)(3) to read as follows:


Sec.  1904.29   Forms.

* * * * *
    (b) * * *
    (3) How quickly must each injury or illness be recorded? You must 
enter each and every recordable injury or illness on the OSHA 300 Log 
and on a 301 Incident Report within seven (7) calendar days of 
receiving information that the recordable injury or illness occurred. A 
failure to record within seven days does not extinguish your continuing 
obligation to make a record of the injury or illness and to maintain 
accurate records of all recordable injuries and illnesses in accordance

[[Page 91810]]

with the requirements of this part. This obligation continues 
throughout the entire record retention period described in Sec.  
1904.33. See Sec. Sec.  1904.4(a); 1904.32(a)(1); 1904.33(b)(1); and 
1904.40(a).
* * * * *

0
6. Revise the heading and paragraphs (a) and (b)(1) of Sec.  1904.32 to 
read as follows:


Sec.  1904.32   Year-end review and annual summary.

    (a) Basic requirement. At the end of each calendar year, you must:
    (1) Review that year's OSHA 300 Log to verify that it contains 
accurate entries for all recordable injuries and illnesses that 
occurred during the year, and make any additions or corrections 
necessary to ensure its accuracy;
    (2) Verify that each injury and illness recorded on the 300 Log, 
including any injuries and illnesses added to the Log following your 
year-end review pursuant to paragraph (a)(1) of this section, is 
accurately recorded on a corresponding 301 Incident Report form;
    (3) After you have verified the accuracy of the Log, create an 
annual summary of injuries and illnesses recorded on the Log;
    (4) Certify the summary; and
    (5) Post the summary.
    (b) * * *
    (1) How extensively do I have to review the OSHA 300 Log at the end 
of the year? You must review the Log and its entries as extensively as 
necessary to verify that all recordable injuries and illnesses that 
occurred during the year are entered and that the Log and its entries 
are accurate.
* * * * *

0
7. Revise the heading and paragraph (b) of Sec.  1904.33 to read as 
follows:


Sec.  1904.33   Retention and maintenance of accurate records.

* * * * *
    (b) Implementation--(1) Other than the obligation identified in 
Sec.  1904.32, do I have further recording duties with respect to the 
OSHA 300 Logs and 301 Incident Reports during the five-year retention 
period? You must make the following additions and corrections to the 
OSHA Log and Incident Reports during the five-year retention period:
    (i) The OSHA Logs must contain entries for all recordable injuries 
and illnesses that occurred during the calendar year to which each Log 
relates. In addition, each and every recordable injury and illness must 
be recorded on an Incident Report. This means that if a recordable case 
occurred and you failed to record it on the Log for the year in which 
the injury or illness occurred, and/or on an Incident Report, you are 
under a continuing obligation to record the case on the Log and/or 
Incident Report during the five-year retention period for that Log and/
or Incident Report;
    (ii) You must also make any additions and corrections to the OSHA 
Log that are necessary to accurately reflect any changes that have 
occurred with respect to previously recorded injuries and illnesses. 
Thus, if the classification, description, or outcome of a previously 
recorded case changes, you must remove or line out the original entry 
and enter the new information; and
    (iii) You must have an Incident Report for each and every 
recordable injury and illness; however, you are not required to make 
additions or corrections to Incident Reports during the five-year 
retention period.
    (2) Do I have to make additions or corrections to the annual 
summary during the five-year retention period? You are not required to 
make additions or corrections to the annual summaries during the five-
year retention period.

0
8. Revise Sec.  1904.34 to read as follows:


Sec.  1904.34   Change in business ownership.

    If your business changes ownership, you are responsible for 
recording and reporting work-related injuries and illnesses only for 
that period of the year during which you owned the establishment. You 
must transfer the Part 1904 records to the new owner. The new owner 
must save all records of the establishment kept by the prior owner, as 
required by Sec.  1904.33, but need not update or correct the records 
of the prior owner. The new owner is not responsible for recording and 
reporting work-related injuries and illnesses that occurred before the 
new owner took ownership of the establishment.

0
9. Revise paragraphs (b)(2) introductory text and (b)(2)(iii) of Sec.  
1904.35 to read as follows:


Sec.  1904.35   Employee involvement.

* * * * *
    (b) * * *
    (2) Do I have to give my employees and their representatives access 
to the OSHA injury and illness records? Yes, your employees, former 
employees, their personal representatives, and their authorized 
employee representatives have the right to access accurate OSHA injury 
and illness records, with some limitations, as discussed below.
* * * * *
    (iii) If an employee or representative asks for access to the OSHA 
300 Log, when do I have to provide it? When an employee, former 
employee, personal representative, or authorized employee 
representative asks for copies of your current or stored OSHA 300 
Log(s) for an establishment the employee or former employee has worked 
in, you must give the requester a copy of the relevant and accurate 
OSHA 300 Log(s) by the end of the next business day.
* * * * *

Subpart E--Reporting Accurate Fatality, Injury, and Illness 
Information to the Government

0
10. Revise the heading of subpart E to read as set forth above.

0
11. Revise the heading and paragraph (a) of Sec.  1904.40 to read as 
follows:


Sec.  1904.40   Providing accurate records to government 
representatives.

    (a) Basic requirement. When an authorized government representative 
requests the records you keep under part 1904, you must provide 
accurate records, or copies thereof, within four (4) business hours of 
the request.
* * * * *
[FR Doc. 2016-30410 Filed 12-16-16; 8:45 am]
 BILLING CODE 4510-26-P