Summary
The broad causes of work-related injuries (or accidents) are behavioral and environmental, although these categories overlap and both may cause particular injuries. The behavioral category includes inter alia personal indifference, inadequate knowledge, and sloppy conduct. The environmental category includes inter alia unsafe physical conditions at the workplace, such as excess speed, defective equipment, and improper ventilations.
Workers’ compensation provides incentives to workplace safety by charging higher premiums to employers with a relatively high number of compensable injuries or diseases. However, some employers are not eligible for firm-level experience rating because their payroll is too small. Other employers may resist paying claims rather than improving safety in order to reduce their premiums.
State safety standards date to the 19th century and by 1910 most states had some safety standards. However, most state safety programs were underfunded or unenforced. In testimony to Congress that led to the enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHAct) the strong consensus was that State safety standards were usually ineffective.
Prior to the enactment of the OSHAct, the Federal government played a limited role in occupational safety and health. The OSHAct expanded the role of the Federal
Government by imposing on employers a general duty to provide a safe workplace, by creating a procedure for promulgating mandatory health and safety standards, by establishing the Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) Administration in the U.S. Department of Labor, by imposing recording and reporting requirements on employers, and by directing the Department of Labor and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to conduct research on occupational safety and health. Despite this array of approaches to promote health and safety. Some skepticism about the potential effect of the OSHAct was expressed by 1971.
Activities to promote health and safety are also occurring in the private sector. Insurance carriers conduct research and offer prevention services to their policyholders. Some employers devote resources to safety and health not only to reduce their workers’ compensation premiums but to reduce other costs or workplace injuries and diseases. Some unions negotiate payments that supplement workers’ compensation cash benefits as well as bargain for safety standards that exceed the OSHAct standards.
Citation:
C. Arthur Williams and Peter S Barth, “Occupational Safety and Workmen’s Compensation,” Chapter 18 in Compendium on Workmen’s Compensation (Washington, DC: National Commission on State Workmen’s Compensation Laws, 1973.)