OSHA Updates Workplace Injury and Illness Data

• OSHA has updated its workplace injury and illness data collected from its Injury Tracking Application for 2024.
• The data is available in both summary and case detail form.
• Federal recordkeeping rules require employers to electronically submit injury and illness data to the agency.
• Specifically, the information is compiled from the more than 350,000 reports submitted on Form 300A Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses.
• The information also includes partial data from more than 725,000 Form 300 Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses and Form 301 Injury and Illness Incident Report records.
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Rhode Island Legislators Mull Bill on ‘Psychological Safety’ in Workplace

• An April 22 Rhode Island Senate hearing will review new legislation covering workplace bullying and workers’ psychological safety.
• SB 959 provides definitions of bullying and guidelines for anti-bullying training and investigations.
• The bill also includes potential damages, including “the greater of all actual damages” or $5,000 for each violation, lost wages, attorney’s fees, and punitive damages
• It specifies legal relief and remedies for workers harmed psychologically, emotionally, physically, professionally, or economically by exposure to an unsafe, toxic work environment, including any subsequent damages to make employees whole.
• Under the bill, employers could mount an affirmative defense to limit damages for psychological abuse, if they took “all steps” specified in the bill to “acknowledge, monitor, prevent, discourage, and adequately address the issues and complaints surrounding allegations of psychological abuse and exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct any violation in this chapter or acted with just cause.”
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Texas Oilfield Operator, Executive Plead Guilty in Poison Gas Deaths

• Aghorn Operating Inc., a Texas oilfield company, pleaded guilty this week to Clean Air Act negligent endangerment charges and an Occupational Safety and Health Act willful violation count in the 2019 death of a worker and his wife in 2019 near Odessa.
• Aghorn will pay $1 million in fines and a services company, Kodiak Roustabout Inc., will pay an additional $400,000.
• Aghorn vice president Trent Day was sentenced to five months in prison after pleading guilty to negligent endangerment charges.
• The charges in United States v. Aghorn Operating, Inc. stemmed from the Oct. 26, 2019 incident at an Aghorn facility in the Permian Basin.
• Monitors for hydrogen sulfide, an invisible gas found in some oil reserves, were not working when Jacob Dean responded to an alarm to check a pump. Dean was exposed to fatal levels of the gas. His wife, Natalee Dean, then entered the facility looking for him and was also killed by hydrogen sulfide exposure.
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