OSHA

I. Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), “Basic Program Elements for Federal Employee Occupational Safety and Health Programs and Related Matters; Subpart I for Recordkeeping and Reporting Requirements”, The Federal Register Journal, Aug 2013 Vol. 78 Issue 150, pp. 180-191.
II. The article reports some of the safety and health standards that are included and covered within the occupational safety and health act and administration (OSHA). According to the author, The OSHA is one of the United States amendments and it was founded in 1970 to preserve people’s rights of a safe and healthful workplace. The OSHA is advising employers of all agencies and sectors to report employees’ illness, injuries or deaths to them because
it can help or assist them in keeping records of different cases that may concern people’s work conditions. The reason for this is so that OSHA have the ability to view statistic of incidents and data, the effectiveness of their inspections, and to be able to create better training plans for their employees.
The OSHA have submitted some of the changes and clarification of some of the rules that already exist to make them more understandable to people.
Also, they restated the status of some public agencies like U.S. Postal Service In order to avoid confusions. The OSHA has changed some of its policies to be suitable for private sector agencies. The recent alterations that were created are enforcing government agencies to submit the collected data of workers’ obtained diseases and live losses every year. to be able to submit the data, agencies of all sectors will need to follow some specific procedure and turn in their data on the listed dates by the OSHA. OSHA uses the gathered data to make injury and illness data annually. To help agencies with their submission date difficulties, they changes the due date system to make it more adequate and appropriate for them. Because records of employees’ injuries and illnesses are important, it is important that the assigned employee of collecting the data and reports must turn them in to OSHA without further modification or changes that would effect the accuracy of the data and agencies from all sectors are expected to do that since the new changes have directed that all agencies will receive the same treatments, conduct the same procedures, and have the same
compliments.
Although OSHA has specific standards that agencies should meet, every agency is responsible for establishing their own policies to make sure that the work conditions are health and safe for employees and it does not expose them to risks while they are on duty as it protects them from possible dangers that they may face. Even though agencies have their own policies, they must be compatible corresponding to those that have been set by OSHA. As well as receiving data from agencies, OSHA require agencies to give them permission and full access to employees’ medical records to review them whenever it is needed.
III. This article was rich of information about OSHA. It introduced a definition for the OSHA and also it listed some of the responsibilities that concern OSHA. It reviewed the role of both federal and private sectors in respond to the OSHA standards and requests. Moreover, it mentioned how collected data and reports from different agencies will be used to calculate the total injury and illness of employees based on annual data. It listed the date in which USPS was included in the occupational safety and health act and the reasons that led to such as establishment. In the article, OSHA have advised agencies to report every injury and illness that employees may have to be used in the future statistics and to be able to know which areas to focus on during inspections.