New Injury and Illness Posting Requirements Effective This Month

Starting this month, employers must post a summary of the total number of job-related injuries and illnesses that occurred last year. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reminds employers that the summary, OSHA’s Form 300A (not the complete Form 300 log), should be displayed in an area where all workers have access to view it and must list the total number of job-related injuries and illnesses that occurred in 2003 and were logged on the OSHA 300 form. Companies with no recordable injuries or illnesses still need to post the summary form with zeroes on the total line. To learn more, visit the OSHA Web site at www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=NEWS_RELEASES&p_id=10645.

Proposed Changes to the EEO-1

By Dorothy Ragsdale, Director, Human Resources, American Library Association

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) EEO-1 report is an annual report prepared by employers. This is a composition of the workforce by sex and race/ethnic category. The information is collected in nine categories: (1) officials and managers; (2) professionals; (3) technicians; (4) sales workers; (5) office and clerical workers; (6) craft workers; (7) operators; (8) laborers; and (9) service workers. Race/ethnic designations used are White (not of Hispanic origin), Black (not of Hispanic origin), Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Island, American Indian or Native American.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has proposed several changes to the EEO-1 report’s race/ethnicity classification system act and the EEO-1 form itself. Currently the EEO-1 report requires employers to collect and provide a demographic snapshot of an employer’s workforce.

The first deals with ethnicity—currently individuals can elect only one category. The revised form will first ask an individual if they are of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity. The second question asks the race of the individual based on five possible choices. Individuals will also have the opportunity to select one or more races. This can be very cumbersome for employers in terms of data collection.

In addition, the EEOC proposed changes to the EEO-1 report job category classification system by implementing three significant changes used in the EEO-1 report. The officials and managers category is being subdivided into three distinct categories which are: (a) senior level executives; (b) mid-level managers; and (c) lower level manager. This will expand the number of categories from nine to eleven.

Another component of the proposed changes is the matching of EEO-1 job categories to Census Occupational classification codes. The proposed changes separated the Officials and Managers into three sub-categories, which are based on responsibility; yet, the Census Occupational classification code is based on skill-- this inconsistency can cause confusion on the part of employers.

In the interim, employers should check the internal administration and human resource information systems determining what, if any changes are required.

A number of organizations forwarded comments and suggestions to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regarding the proposed changes. At this time EEOC has not announced effective dates for these changes.