Short answer. A monetary liability. An employer who fails to record an actual injury within the period set by the Labor Code is liable for fifty percent of the lump sum equivalent of the income benefit the employee is found entitled to — and that money accrues to the State Insurance Fund, not to you.
What the law says
he shall be held liable for fifty percent of the lump sum equivalent of the income benefit to which the employee may be found to be entitled, the payment of which shall accrue to the State Insurance Fund
Labor Code, Article 205 — Employer’s Logbook. Read the full provision →
The duty the employer missed
The article requires every employer to keep a logbook recording, chronologically, the sickness, injury or death of employees, with names, dates and places, the nature of the contingency, and absences. Entries must be made within five days from notice or knowledge of the occurrence. So the clock runs from when the employer learned of it, not from when you filed anything formal — an employer who knew about your accident and simply did not write it down has missed the deadline the article sets.
Three ways to incur the liability, not one
The sanction is not limited to a blank page. It applies to an employer who fails to record an actual sickness, injury or death within the prescribed period, who gives false information, or who withholds material information already in his possession. An entry that misdescribes what happened, or a logbook produced while the employer sits on records that tell a different story, engages the same provision as an omission. The offence is against the accuracy of the record, not merely its existence.
The penalty does not go to the injured worker
This is the point most people get wrong. The fifty percent is measured against your benefit, so it sounds like an addition to what you receive — but the article directs that the payment accrue to the State Insurance Fund. It is a sanction payable to the fund, not extra compensation to you. Your own entitlement is determined on its own merits, and the absence of a logbook entry does not by itself prove or defeat that your injury was work-connected.
Build your own record instead
Because the logbook is in the employer's hands, gather what is in yours: medical records with dates, the incident report if one exists, photographs, messages telling a supervisor what happened, and the names of anyone who saw it. The article also lets the System require the employer to certify information from the logbook by entry, page and date, and makes the logbook open to inspection by its authorised representative — so a missing entry is a question the employer can be made to answer.