Sadly, under-reporting of workplace injuries has been an acknowledged fact among safety professionals for several years. Now, however, there are new grounds to hope that this situation may be reversed.

The 3 Layers of Workplace Injury Under-Reporting

Under-reporting occurs at three different levels.

Government Under-Reporting: Statistical data reveals that government counts of occupational injuries and illness are underestimated by as much as 69%. For instance, according to a study published in the April 2006 issue of Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) Annual Surveys, in the State of Michigan for the years 1999 through 2001 reflected only 33% of injuries and 31% of illnesses actually reported in various databases from the state for those years. A similar study published in 2008 found that the BLS surveys for the years between 1998 and 2001 in Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin missed half to a quarter of the injuries and illnesses that occurred in those six states.

One reason the government BLS surveys keep under-reporting workplace injuries and illnesses is that the data exclude many categories of workers, such as the self-employed, farms with fewer than 11 employees, employers regulated by other federal safety and health laws, private household employees and federal, state and local government agencies. These exemptions result in the exclusion of more than one in five workers from the BLS survey!

Employer Under-Reporting: The other main reason for BLS under-reporting is that the illnesses and injuries that are counted are based on the OSHA records of employers. And employers are known for under-reporting workplace injuries and illnesses. There are plenty of incentives for companies to under-report and hold themselves out as having a lower injury and illness record than they actually have, including:

• To keep workers’ compensation experience-based rating costs down;
• To improve the company’s chance of landing government (and private sector) contracts; and
• To avoid being targeted for OSHA inspections under programs that use illness and injury rates to select inspection targets.

Worker Under-Reporting: Just like employers, workers have numerous reasons not to report an injury or illness. These include:

• Programs initiated by employers that offer financial rewards to individuals or departments for going a certain number of days without an injury;
• The fear of being considered “accident-prone”;
• The fear that reporting an injury or illness will lead to discipline or even termination; and
• Lack of understanding or intimidation by the intricacies and procedures of the workers’ compensation system.

Reluctance to report injuries is especially pronounced among foreign-born workers, especially but not exclusively those who are in the country illegally. Foreign workers are also likely to be unfamiliar with the methods used to report injuries.

New Government Initiatives Target Under-Reporting

Under-reporting has been going on for a long time. Although the Bush Administration didn’t start the problem, it didn’t do much to address it, either. But things are changing. Congress has now focused on the problem. The 2009 omnibus Department of Labor funding bill contains:

• $1 million for an enhanced OSHA record-keeping enforcement program;
• $1 million for the BLS to further study problems of under-reporting; and
• $250,000 for NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) research on under-reporting.

In addition, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is conducting a study on under-reporting and employer injury record-keeping practices.

Most significant, on September 30, 2009, OSHA began a new Record-keeping National Emphasis Program (NEP) that specifically targets OSHA Logs and injury reporting at companies that report a low rate of injuries. The Record-keeping NEP inspection has three components:

• A records review: This targets the OSHA 301. OSHA inspectors look at such records as medical, workers’ comp, absentee, etc., for verification that all illnesses and injuries are recorded on the OSHA 301;
• Interviews: Direct, face-to-face interviews with record-keeping officials, employees, managers and healthcare providers of a company;
• Walk-around Inspections: A walk-around, visual inspection of the main operations area(s).

To be included on the Record-keeping NEP inspection list, a company must be in a high-risk industry (animal slaughtering, poultry processing, steel foundry, soft drink manufacturing, etc.) and have a DART (Days Away Restricted and Job Transfer Rate of Injuries and Illnesses) of 4.2 or lower during 2007. Go to http://www.osha.gov/OshDoc/Directive_pdf/CPL_02_09-08.pdf to find out more.

Conclusion

For the OSHA system to work, it’s essential for employers to provide accurate reports of the injuries and illnesses that occur at their workplace. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been happening. As a result of under-reporting, the true dimensions of workplace safety problems in the U.S. haven’t been revealed. But the DOL and NIOSH funding bill, GAO study and OSHA NEP offer reason to hope that, at long last, the government has recognized the problem and is committed to take real steps to deal with it. And that is truly great news for the American worker.

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