OKLAHOMA CITY – A government agency claims that a new proposal would make a lot of workplaces safer for employees. However, the Oklahoma Labor Commissioner claims the move would end up hurting companies and the employees in the end.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has created a proposal that would require businesses to send information to the agency about workplace injuries and illnesses.

That information would then be published on a website, which would make it available to the public.

OSHA says the information would help people decide where they want to work, along with alerting the agency to where changes need to be made.

Mark Costello, the Oklahoma Labor Commissioner, says the OSHA is simply using a ‘naming and shaming’ approach, which could end up hurting local businesses.

Costello said, “This proposed regulation is a federal government overreach that will invite distortion of a company’s safety record and encourage unions, trial lawyers and other adversaries of the marketplace to use the data against the backbone of the economy, American businesses. The proposed use of data does not tell the full story about the circumstances surrounding an injury and efforts to prevent such injury by the business owner.”