Capital Sectors and Workers' Health and Safety in the United States

1995 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt J. Greenlund ◽  
Ray H. Elling
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Injury ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Concentration ◽  
Hazard Exposure ◽  
Industrial Sectors ◽  
Worker Health And Safety ◽  
System 2 ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
The Relationship

The dual or segmented economy perspective suggests that the U.S. production system within a capitalist world-system can be divided into distinct sectors based on elements such as levels of industrial concentration, foreign involvement, and unionization. The differing organization of these sectors is argued to influence worker health and safety (WHS) outcomes. An economic segmentation model was applied to national occupational health data to examine the relationship between structural divisions in the economy and occupational hazard exposure, injury, and illness. Workers in more global industrial sectors had only average levels of hazardous exposure but a greater likelihood of occupational injury and illness than workers in other sectors of the economy. These differences are related to the structure of work in the various sectors. The findings suggest the need for (1) greater surveillance and reporting of WHS problems through the general health care system; (2) planning of economic and productive activity that takes WHS issues into account; and (3) greater worker organization and power within and between nations to improve WHS.

Factors Influencing Health and Safety Performance in New Zealand

1986 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara McIntosh ◽  
Michael A. Gurdon
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
Safety Performance ◽  
Environmental Pressures ◽  
Industrial Sectors ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Government Rules ◽  
The Relationship

Multiple environmental pressures, both internal and external to the organization, are examined as factors influencing the administration of health and safety programmes and subsequent accident performance. Data were collected from seven industrial sectors in New Zealand. Those firms with better safety records indicated that the most influential factors shaping their policies included government rules and regulations and demonstrated employee concerns and demands. The quality of the relationship with the union and the locus of enterprise ownership also play a significant role in the effectiveness of health and safety administration.

scholarly journals 50 years on from the Woodhouse Report

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Duncan
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Accident Compensation ◽  
Working People ◽  
Worker Health And Safety ◽  
Work Health ◽  
Cover Inequalities ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Work And Health

It has been 50 years since the Woodhouse Report was published, resulting in the creation of the first ACC scheme for New Zealand. Work and the working environment have changed a great deal in this time, as have scientific understandings of the relationship between work and health. The Accident Compensation Act 2001, as it stands, is struggling to provide fair and equitable compensation to New Zealand workers, with significant gaps in cover, inequalities in the treatment of different occupations and a detrimental flow-on effect for worker health and safety. This article outlines some of the key areas of legal reform required to ensure that the ACC scheme can meet the needs of New Zealand working people in the future and help improve work health and safety.

scholarly journals The Relationship Between Reporting Occupational Injuries, Job Control, and Safety Citizenship Sub-dimensions of Action

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Clint Pinion
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Injury ◽  
Occupational Injuries ◽  
Research Question ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Job Control ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Ordinal Logistic Regression Analysis ◽  
Injury Reporting ◽  
The Relationship

More than five thousand workers lost their lives in 2018 due to occupational incidents. Research suggests that increased job control and safety citizenship can help mitigate occupational incidents. This study aims to answer the following research question: Does a relationship exist between the behavior of reporting occupational injuries and both job control and safety citizenship? This exploratory cross-sectional study used an employee perception questionnaire to examine the behavior of reporting occupational injuries, employee job control, and six safety citizenship sub-dimensions of action (i.e. stewardship, civic virtue, whistleblowing, initiating safety-related change, voice, and helping) at two companies in the Midwestern region of the United States. The survey consisted of 34 items and used a 5-point Likert Scale to quantify the data gathered along with other demographic variables. An ordinal logistic regression analysis to investigate the relationship between the behavior of reporting occupational injuries, job control, and the six sub-dimensions of safety citizenship was conducted. Results indicate that job control ( X2 = 8.512, df = 1, p < 0.05) and whistleblowing (X2 = 4.836, df = 1, p < 0.05) predict the behavior of occupational injury reporting.

scholarly journals Estimating of the costs of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses in agricultural works in Thailand

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Densak Yogyorn ◽  
Craig Slatin ◽  
Somkiat Siriruttanapruk ◽  
Susan Woskie ◽  
Thanawadee Chantian ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Occupational Injury ◽  
Occupational Injuries ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Medical Costs ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Agricultural Work ◽  
Universal Health Care System ◽  
Worker Health And Safety ◽  
Universal Health

Abstract Thailand lacks occupational injury and illness (OII) surveillance for its agricultural sector, a sector that comprises 34% of the total Thai workforce but is not covered by the workers compensation system. This study used data from Thailand’s Universal Health Care System to estimate the medical costs of OIIs from agricultural work in Thailand. In 2017, OII medical costs totaled $47 million (USD), about ~ 0.2% of the gross domestic product produced by the Thai agricultural sector. We recommend that some of the national funds currently used for medical treatment of OIIs be used instead to develop and implement prevention programs in agriculture. This would improve not only worker health and safety, but also productivity. Availability of data on working conditions, injuries and illnesses, and especially lost time, lost income and productivity, and OII-related costs for the workers and their dependents might enable better public health policy formulation.

Spatial Categories, Legal Boundaries, and the Judicial Mapping of the Worker

1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 629-644 ◽  
Author(s):  
J C Bakan ◽  
N K Blomley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Federal States ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Critical Tradition ◽  
Legal Geography ◽  
Worker Health ◽  
Worker Health And Safety

It is argued that there are important parallels and intersections between critical theoretical analysis in legal studies and in geography. Each critical tradition is sceptical about the ontological status of its disciplinary foundation—‘law’ in legal studies, and ‘space’ in geography. Furthermore, the reification of particular distinctions in legal discourse is deepened by spatial distinctions. A convergence of critical legal and geographic analyses can thus have powerful analytical consequences, and the authors attempt to demonstrate this point by investigating judicial approaches to the regulation of worker health and safety in two federal states, Canada and the United States. They conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and political significance of critical legal geography, and suggest some directions it might take in the future.

scholarly journals Health and Occupational Injury Experienced by Latinx Child Farmworkers in North Carolina, USA

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Arcury ◽  
Taylor J. Arnold ◽  
Sara A. Quandt ◽  
Haiying Chen ◽  
Gregory D. Kearney ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Occupational Injury ◽  
Occupational Injuries ◽  
Traumatic Injury ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Work Injuries ◽  
The Past

Children as young as 10 years old are hired to work on farms in the United States (U.S.). These children are largely Latinx. Using interview data collected from 202 North Carolina Latinx child farmworkers in 2017, this analysis documents the heath characteristics and occupational injuries of Latinx child farmworkers and delineates characteristics associated with their health and occupational injuries. Latinx child farmworkers include girls (37.6%) and boys (62.4%), aged 10 to 17 years, with 17.8% being migrant farmworkers. Three-quarters reported receiving medical and dental care in the past year. Respiratory (15.8%) and vision (20.3%) problems were prevalent. Girls more than boys, and younger more than older children had greater health service utilization. Occupational injuries were common, with 26.2% reporting a traumatic injury, 44.1% a dermatological injury, 42.6% a musculoskeletal injury, and 45.5% heat-related illness in the past year. Age increased the odds of reporting work injuries and heat-related illness, and being a non-migrant reduced the odds of reporting work injuries. These results emphasize the need for greater documentation of child farmworker occupational health and safety. They underscore the need to change occupational safety policy to ensure that children working in agriculture have the same protections as those working in all other U.S. industries.

Industrial Concentration and the Capital Markets: A Comparative Study of Brazil, Mexico, and the United States, 1830–1930

1991 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 559-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Haber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Capital Market ◽  
Industrial Structure ◽  
The United States ◽  
Market Development ◽  
Cotton Textile ◽  
Industrial Concentration ◽  
Regulatory Policies ◽  
Textile Industries ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the relationship between capital market development and industrial structure during the early stages of industrialization, contrasting the experiences of Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. It argues that constraints placed on the formation of credit intermediaries in Latin America by poorly defined property rights and government regulatory policies produced greater concentration in the Mexican and Brazilian cotton textile industries than that which developed in the United States.

scholarly journals Climate Change Impacts and Workforce Development Needs in Federal Region X: A Qualitative Study of Occupational Health and Safety Professionals’ Perceptions

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1513
Author(s):  
Katherine M. Pedersen ◽  
Tania M. Busch Isaksen ◽  
Marissa G. Baker ◽  
Noah Seixas ◽  
Nicole A. Errett
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Occupational Health ◽  
Workforce Development ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Occupational Health And Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Key Informant ◽  
Worker Health And Safety ◽  
And Training

Climate change is considered one of the top health threats in the United States. This research sought to (1) to understand the perceptions of occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals regarding the impacts of climate-related hazards on OHS in Region X, and (2) to explore the ideas of these OHS professionals regarding the content of future training programs that would better prepare OHS professionals to identify and mitigate climate-related hazards in Region X. Key informant (KI) interviews with 17 OHS professionals familiar with the climate-related hazards and impacts to OHS in Region X were coded and thematically analyzed. Climate hazards, social and economic impacts from climate-related hazards, and sector-specific worker and workplace impacts from climate-related hazards were described as having interacting relationships that influenced worker health and safety impacts. KIs further described how workplace controls could be used to mitigate OHS impacts of climate-related hazards, and how training of the OHS workforce could influence the ability to successfully implement such controls. Our findings suggest that OHS impacts are sector-specific, influenced by social and economic factors, and can be mitigated through workplace controls designed and implemented by a trained OHS workforce. The findings from this work should inform future educational and training programming and additional research and translation activities in the region, while our approach can inform other regions as they develop regionally specific OHS climate change training and programming.

New York State’s COSH Movement: A Brief History

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-226
Author(s):  
Michael Lax
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
New York State ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Safety And Health ◽  
Worker Health And Safety ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Participants

Unions, health and safety activists, and professionals came together to create Coalitions for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH groups) in a number of cities across the United States beginning in the 1970s. The COSHes have played an important and unique role in advocating worker health and safety since that time, through activities including technical assistance, training and education, and campaigns on workplace and public policies. In New York State, activist coalitions created eight COSH groups distributed around the state. This paper presents a history of New York’s COSHes based on interviews with key participants. The interviews shed light on the origins of the COSH movement in New York, the development and activities of the COSHes, and the organizational trajectory of individual New York COSHes in response to both extra and intraorganizational challenges. Participants’ accounts of these issues may be useful for those seeking to sustain the COSH movement.

Hazards for Agricultural Workers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy K. Liebman ◽  
John May
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Agricultural Workers ◽  
Immigrant Workers ◽  
Large Animal ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Worker Health And Safety ◽  
Nonfatal Injuries

This chapter describes hazards for agricultural workers. This is a large and exceedingly diverse group, with work—often precarious work—being performed by very young and very old persons, workers who are often economically disadvantaged, and workers of many nationalities and languages. There is considerable variation in power between employers and workers who frequently lack authorization for legal employment in the United States. Emphasis is placed on the hazards faced by migrant workers and immigrant workers. A number of factors, including public policy and the hazards involved with agriculture, such as pesticides, impact worker health and safety. Agricultural workers do not have many of the regulatory protections provided to workers in most other industries in the United States. Mechanical, large-animal, environmental, and toxicologic challenges all contribute to the markedly elevated rates of fatal and nonfatal injuries in these workers. High rates of stress and suicide affect these young workers.

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