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Workplace injuries decline for sixth consecutive year

Submitted by Jon Henke on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 13:23
in

The Left has a pretty consistent policy towards regulation: More, please; anytime, anywhere.  If there's a problem, it must be the job of government to regulate.

  • NYTImes, 2001: "The union officials said they feared that Ms. Chao would adopt toothless, voluntary recommendations for American corporations that would fail to prevent the 1.8 million injuries estimated to be caused each year by repetitive motions."

  • NYTimes, 2001: "But labor unions and many public- health advocates say federal regulations are needed because not all corporations can be trusted to protect workers."

  • NYTImes, 2003: "Politicians score easy points by railing against big government and excessive federal regulations. But a three-part series in The Times this week by David Barstow and Lowell Bergman showed that workplace safety rules are in fact far too weak, and dramatically underenforced."

This must be those harmful consequences of deregulation.

The rate of workplace injuries and illnesses in private industry declined in 2007 for the sixth consecutive year, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported today. Nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses reported by private industry employers declined from 4.4 cases per 100 workers in 2006 to 4.2 cases in 2007.

And since miners are often invoked as a symbol of workplace safety problems, the record on mine safety for the past few decades...

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possibly misleading...

Submitted by jakeyr on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 19:58.

I'd prefer to see the number of injuries per capita instead, to normalize for the number of active miners per year.

Additionally, the fact that injuries are on the decline (I'm guessing this is due to advancements in technology) doesn't preclude better regulation from dropping these numbers even lower.

Torts, torts and more torts

Submitted by RHOmea on Fri, 10/24/2008 - 12:16.

Interesting,

I'd like to see what the corresponding statistics are for lawsuits and jury awards over the same periods. My guess is that they run inverse to the nr of injuries  with some years lag time), and are at least partly responsible for increased preventive training, equipment and other measures being initiated by employers as a risk mitigation scheme. hence, lower injury rates.

I beleive that one of the issues in the US is that the lack of effective workplace and other safety regulations over a wide range of industries drives people into the courts to force employers to create the safer work environments that better regs might have promulgated in the first place.

Then juries use the punitive award phase to further drive home the point, potentially costing industry a great deal more than sensible, mutually developed guidelines would have done. Factor in legal costs and the impact of such cases on liabilty insurance premiums, lost manhours and productivity and I think a case for better regulations might be valid.

In most of the EU (i.e SE, UK, NL), where even such matters as seemingly picayune as wrist supports for keyboards and minimum lumbar support in desk seating are often highly regulated, there are far fewer injuries per 100,000 employees than in the US. Liability insurance rates are miniscule by comparison. Granted this is partly cultural - but the net effect is people get injured less, hence less loss of work time, cost to business and far fewer lawsuits.

Perhaps effective regulations, prudently developed cooperatively rather than combatively, could save American businesses substantial money that is far better spent in the company than in court?

Food for thought.

 

Sources:

http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/european/tables.htm#table2

http://www.foundrymag.com/feature/feature/49954/osha_releases_2005_workp...

 

misleading numbers

Submitted by gtb226 on Fri, 10/24/2008 - 18:00.

I think that these numbers are misleading as a result of deregulation. Deregulation has lead OSHA to rely more and more on self-reporting. These industries have systematically discouraged workers from reporting their injuries which has lead to the numbers you cite above. (see http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/washington/25osha.html)