OSHA Assistant Secretary David Michaels, Deputy Assistant Jordan Barab, and other political appointees at OSHA have consistently voiced the opinion that employer “cheating” with regard to recordkeeping is rampant. OSHA is once again asserting that half of all workplaces being inspected for recordkeeping violations are underreporting injuries and illnesses. In a way this is surprising and in a way it is not. It is surprising because OSHA had temporarily suspended its National Emphasis Program (NEP) on recordkeeping after 2010 data failed to establish that employers were underreporting as the agency suspected when the emphasis program was announced in 2009. In another way, it is not surprising, since OSHA refused to accept the idea that the negative findings by compliance officers could be accurate. Following its temporary suspension of the auditing program and under the assertion that it routinely revises its NEPs, OSHA expanded the criteria for the NEP by including manufacturing and a broader time period. Not surprisingly, the new data from the revised NEP shows a higher non-compliance rate.
