Employers may soon find OSHA Compliance Safety and Health Officers (CSHOs) asking for additional information during the course of an OSHA inspection. On July 31, 2014, the President signed Executive Order 13673 (Order): Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces. The purpose of the Order is to ensure that employers who contract with the federal government (contracts worth over $500,000) are compliant with various labor laws, and that employers who are not complaint are not awarded federal contracts. According to a recent memorandum from Tom Galassi, Director for OSHA’s Directorate of Enforcement Programs, to OSHA Regional Administrators, this change marks “the first time, that the DOL and other federal agencies will have access to the labor law compliance record of employers bidding on government contracts.” (Memorandum to Regional Administrators, State Plan Designees, dated April 23, 2015.)

This memorandum instructs CSHOs to request additional data from employers during OSHA inspections. According to OSHA, “[t]he new information is necessary to provide a unified means of identifying companies on a government-wide database.” During the course of inspections, CSHOs will ask employers for the following information:

1. Employer DUNS Number: Unique nine digit identifier issued by Dun & Bradstreet verifying the existence of a business entity globally;

2. Employer DUNS + 4: Additional numbers included by the firm identifying affiliates and subsidiaries;

3. Employer CAGE code: Commercial and Government Entity Code is a unique identifier assigned to suppliers of various government agencies;

4. Employer currently a federal contractor: Yes or No;

5. Parent Company DUNS Number;

6. Parent Company DUNS plus 4;

7. Parent Company CAGE code;

8. Parent Company TIN/EIN: Taxpayer Identification Number and Employer Identification Number are defined as a nine digit number that the IRS assigns to organizations;

9. Parent Company legal name: The legal name of a business is the name under which the business conducts its operations;

10. Parent Company trade name / doing business as: A trade name, trading name, or business name is a name that a business uses for trading commercial products or services;

11. Parent Company Contact Information:

    1. Street address

    2. City

    3. State

    4. Zip code

    5. Company phone number

12. Imminent Danger notice(s) including issuance date.

According to the memorandum, the CSHOs may collect this information at any time during the inspection and if it is not available, they should note that it was not available, was unknown, or that it did not exist. The information will be entered into the OSHA Information System (OIS) and transferred nightly to a new central DOL Master Data Repository.

Employers should note that if for whatever reason they cannot provide the information, the inspection should proceed as normal and that their inability to provide the information will not have an adverse impact on the findings of the inspection.