LBExamThree documents and four deadlines cover injury and illness recordkeeping for a California contractor with employees. The documents are the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) Form 300 log, the Form 301 incident report and the Form 300A annual summary. The deadlines are seven days, February 1, five years, and the two reporting clocks in the Labor Code that run whether or not you keep a log at all. The Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) posted its yearly reminder about the February 1 posting on January 29, 2026, and the Safety section of the Law and Business exam, 14 percent of the paper by the March 2026 study guide, is where this material is tested.
Who keeps the log
The recording rules are in Title 8 of the California Code of Regulations, ss. 14300 to 14300.48, adopted under Lab. Code s. 6410 and enforced by Cal/OSHA, which that section names as the Division of Occupational Safety and Health. Two partial exemptions decide who keeps records.
Under 8 CCR s. 14300.1, a company with ten or fewer employees at all times during the last calendar year does not keep the log unless the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells it in writing to. The count is company-wide peak employment, not per site. Cross ten at any point in the year and the log is required the next year.
Section 14300.2 exempts establishments in the industries listed in its Table
- The table is retail, finance, professional services and the like, and construction is not on it, so a contractor with more than ten employees keeps the log.
Both exemptions carry the same sentence: every employer, exempt or not, still reports a serious injury, illness or death to Cal/OSHA, and still files the injury reports the Labor Code requires. The exemptions are from the log, never from reporting.
What goes on it
A case is recorded when it is work-related and meets one of the general recording criteria in s. 14300.7: death, days away from work, restricted work or transfer to another job, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant injury or illness diagnosed by a physician or other licensed health care professional. Work-relatedness is presumed for anything that happens in the work environment (s. 14300.5), which on a construction job includes the equipment and materials the employee uses.
The first-aid line is where most close calls land, and the regulation settles it with a closed list. Section 14300.7(b)(5)(B) names fourteen treatments that are first aid, among them nonprescription medication at nonprescription strength, a tetanus shot, cleaning or bandaging a surface wound, hot or cold therapy, an elastic wrap, a splint used only to move the person, draining a blister, removing a splinter with tweezers, an eye patch, and drinking fluids for heat stress. The regulation says the list is complete. Sutures, prescription-strength medication, a rigid brace or physical therapy are medical treatment, and who provides the treatment changes nothing.
Days away are counted in calendar days starting the day after the injury, weekends included, and may be capped at 180. A physician’s recommendation to stay home counts even when the employee comes to work anyway.
Seven days to write it down
Section 14300.29 sets the forms and the first deadline. Each recordable case goes on the Form 300 as a one or two line entry, with a Form 301 incident report, or an equivalent form, for each one, within seven calendar days of receiving information that a recordable injury or illness has occurred. Records may be kept on a computer if it can print the equivalent forms on demand. Employees must be told how to report an injury to you, and they and their representatives have access to the records (s. 14300.35).
February 1 to April 30: the annual summary
At the end of each calendar year, s. 14300.32 requires the employer to review the Form 300 for completeness, total its columns onto the Form 300A, and have a company executive certify it: an owner for a sole proprietorship or partnership, a corporate officer, the highest ranking official at the establishment, or that person’s immediate supervisor. The summary is posted where notices to employees go, no later than February 1 of the following year, and stays up until April 30. If there were no recordable cases, the summary is still prepared and posted, with zeros. Employees who do not report to the posting location at least weekly are sent a copy.
Establishments with 250 or more employees, and those with 20 to 249 in the industries listed in the regulation’s Appendix H, also submit the Form 300A electronically to OSHA each year under s. 14300.41; the larger ones in Appendix I submit the 300 and 301 as well.
Five years, and four business hours
Section 14300.33: the Form 300, the Form 300A, the Form 301 reports and any privacy case list are kept for five years after the end of the year they cover. During those five years the Form 300 is updated for newly discovered cases and for changes in how a case turned out; the 300A and 301 need not be.
When an authorized government representative asks for the records, the originals are produced within four business hours, with one free set of copies on request (s. 14300.40).
Reporting to the state: five days and immediately
Recording is for your own files. Reporting goes to the state, and its deadlines are in the Labor Code.
Under Lab. Code s. 6409.1(a), every employer files a report of each occupational injury or illness that results in lost time beyond the date of injury, or requires medical treatment beyond first aid, within five days of learning of it. An insured employer files with its workers’ compensation insurer; a self-insured one files with DIR. If the employee later dies of the injury, an amended report goes in within five days of the employer learning of the death.
Under subdivision (b), a serious injury or illness, or a death, is reported immediately to Cal/OSHA by telephone or through the online mechanism the division provides, and an employer who fails to may be assessed a civil penalty of not less than $5,000. The recording regulation restates the same duty with a number on it: s. 14300.7(b)(2) says a work-related fatality or serious injury or illness is reported to the division within eight hours, as required by 8 CCR s. 342. Section 342 itself is outside the part of Title 8 reproduced on this site, so the eight-hour figure is quoted from s. 14300.7.
The deadlines side by side
| What | When | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Enter a recordable case on the Form 300 and 301 | 7 calendar days | 8 CCR s. 14300.29 |
| Post the Form 300A | February 1, until April 30 | 8 CCR s. 14300.32 |
| Keep the 300, 300A and 301 | 5 years after the year covered | 8 CCR s. 14300.33 |
| Produce records to an inspector | 4 business hours | 8 CCR s. 14300.40 |
| Employer’s report of injury to the insurer or DIR | 5 days | Lab. Code s. 6409.1(a) |
| Serious injury, illness or death to Cal/OSHA | Immediately; 8 hours per s. 14300.7(b)(2) | Lab. Code s. 6409.1(b) |
Sources
- Title 8, California Code of Regulations, Chapter 7, Subchapter 1, Article 2, ss. 14300.1, 14300.2, 14300.5, 14300.7, 14300.29, 14300.32, 14300.33, 14300.35, 14300.40 and 14300.41
- Labor Code, Division 5, Part 1, s. 6409.1
- DIR News, “Cal/OSHA reminds employers to post 2025 injury and illness summary by February 1”, January 29, 2026
- Law and Business study guide, form 13E-LAW rev. 03-2026, CSLB, for the Safety section’s share of the exam