Thursday, October 06, 2005

Company Injury and Illness Rates Available

I wrote last August about a lawsuit won by the NY Times winning the paper the right to obtain injury and illness rates for the 80,000 companies in selected high-hazard industries across the country that OSHA tracks in order to determine its inspection targeting strategy.

Employers had argued that this information somehow contained trade secrets and OSHA had argued that they would have to spend valuable resources asking each and every company for permission to release the data. The judge wasn't buying it, noting that employers are already required to post the information for all to see.

The Memory Hole, a website dedicated to "rescuing knowledge and freeing information" has now made all of this data (all 80,000 businesses, by name, from 1996 to 2002) available on its website, converted into Excel spreadsheet files.

Maye your employer is on it. Check it out. I'm sure you'll find a use for it.