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Comment by pipo234 | Hacker News Reader

(Lack of) government regulation in Texas and China might have something to do with it...

> In Germany, all work accidents must be reported.

Workplace accidents are legally required to be reported in all of America, per OSHA regulations. There are definitely issues with compliance in some situations, but I guarantee that the OSHA inspectors take this sort of thing seriously.

Having watched a lot of Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board videos* i am a bit doubtful of that statement. Do you have firsthand knowledge here?

*Amazing videos, can really recommend them. https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB/videos

OSHA inspectors really do take workplace injuries and safety seriously, regardless of how toothless the enforcement actions sometimes seem.

The real problem is that there are about 2000 OSHA inspectors in the country, working out of about 100 offices, and serving more than 100 million workers.

Does that count the Michigan OSHA inspectors? Do other states have their own inspection staff beyond Michigan? Honestly not sure, but I know Michigan runs that program independently as a history of the organized labor movement, and they have quite a few inspectors.

Nope, that's just Federal.

About half of the states have their own OSHA organizations, but I don't know much about how effective they are. In the northeast where I grew up most of the state-run OSHA orgs only dealt with state/county/city government jobs and left private employers to Federal OSHA.

Well, I have extensive OSHA training and a couple certifications, and I've worked in manufacturing companies (if not directly in the plants, but the awareness trainings were required).

There's the law, and there's following the law.

There are tons of managers in the USA who will pressure people who've been injured into not reporting an incident or lying about where/how it happened. Companies can get away with this for years before anything happens to them.

Even paper cuts for office workers, I kid you not. While this, paper cuts, may sound excesive, the system allows forba close, and reliable, monitoring of the more serious accidents. So it is a good thing.

I guess it makes sense. Don't leave room for people to interpret if an accident is worth reporting or not.

If this weren't a forum where we discuss only serious matters, I'd feel obliged to post Monty Python meme: "...It's just a flesh wound..."

I thought only those has to be reported, which would cause you to miss more than 3 days of work.

I think I read that somewhere, but not certain!

That is correct, see https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/tesla-gruen... where it is mentioned in the third paragraph.

Yes, this is correct.

All accidents, no matter how minor, have to be documented and the documentation kept for 5 years though.

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