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Friday, November 18, 2016

New OSHA Incident Reporting Rule and Post-Incident Drug Testing


Some of you may remember a Blog we posted in June regarding the new Federal OSHA incident reporting rule. Minnesota OSHA has yet to determine if or when it will be adopting the new recordkeeping rule, however we wanted to keep you informed of some changes taking place with the federal rule.

Federal OSHA has delayed enforcement of the new recordkeeping rule until Dec 1st as there has been some confusion regarding  post-incident drug testing of employees that was incorporated into it. The Federal rule offers employees protection against “retaliatory drug testing” from employers as a result of an employee reporting an incident. The wording of the rule however left some confused as to whether post-incident testing was allowed at all now. Federal OSHA’s latest guidance clarifies that it still allows employers to implement post-incident drug testing when there is “an objectively reasonable basis for testing”, or if the testing is unrelated to incident reporting.

Again we want to clarify that these changes will not currently affect Minnesota Cities as MN OSHA has not released its version of the new rule as of yet, but wanted to keep you updated as we had previously informed you of the federal rule change.

For more information, as well as some tips on how to properly implement a post-incident drug testing program you can visit this blog: http://new.newsedge.com/servlet/newsedge/newsedge?cmmd=readStory&key=wKsIPsAlw_XS5on0axjvh6KrNqy603RgySgIHANAygQE0eH4nvUCAQPt_NVu52xldcPwm0bzoCNd5n4NA3z-nR4txg2OJ2VvevNqZ1xi0xcQpXvHWoBORqWQ5m68Vgpw
 


By: Cody Tuttle



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