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Beware of New Data on Workplace Injury |
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Did incidents of workplace illness and injury decline last year? On the surface, the data in yesterday’s report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) sure seems that way. The BLS figures show a slight drop-off in private-sector workplace injuries and illnesses in 2006, compared with 2005, and indicate the rate of injuries and illnesses was the lowest since 1972.
Let’s take a closer look.
BLS bases its figures on data recorded on the Log of Injuries and Illnesses required by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). And as workplace safety advocates and academics long have pointed out, these figures have a major flaw—they are compiled from one source—employers.
Some studies, including a 2006 report in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, find that the government’s tallies of injuries and illnesses on the job could be underreported by as much as 69 percent.
As the AFL-CIO’s 2007 report Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect notes:
Underreporting of workplace injuries and illnesses is not a new phenomenon. Numerous government-driven and independent studies have documented the problem of underreporting and made recommendations to correct it, yet little mention ever is made of underreporting when the BLS statistics are released. And officials at OSHA have largely ignored the issue of underreporting, continuing to rely on employer reports of workplace injuries as evidence that policies are working, despite evidence that this information is unreliable.
That report, released in April before the 2006 statistics were available, used figures from the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine’s study “How Much of Work-Related Injury and Illness is Missed by the Current National Surveillance System?” to estimate the difference between the BLS injury and illness stats for 2005 and what many safety experts consider the more accurate number.
In 2005, BLS reported there were 4.2 million nonfatal injuries and illnesses in private-sector workplaces, but one underreporting is factored in, the figure is closer to 12.6 million incidents. The number of cases per 100 workers, according to BLS, was 4.6, but the more accurate figure is 13.8 injuries and illnesses per 100 workers.
If you look at repetitive stress injuries, also known as musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), BLS reported there were 375,540 lost-workday MSDs in 2005, but the real number of those injuries is more likely closer to 1.13 million.
Both those numbers might have gone down significantly if the then-Republican-controlled Congress and President Bush had not overturned OSHA’s ergonomics standard in 2001. Unions, workplace safety advocates and OSHA worked for several years to develop an ergonomics rule that would have significantly reduced the number of workers’ repetitive stress injuries. Strident opposition from Big Business groups and Republican congressional leaders stalled action for years, but in November 2000, OSHA issued the rule.Why would employers deliberately underreport workers’ injuries and illnesses? As Death on the Job points out, there are several economic reasons, including:
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Workers’ compensation systems create incentives for employers to underreport by increasing costs for companies that show an increase in injuries.
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Firms seeking government contracts may fear being denied a contract if their injury rate is high.
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OSHA’s reliance on injury rates in targeting inspections and measuring performance creates a clear incentive for employers not to record injuries.
While it is good the BLS figures show a decrease in the reported number of workers getting hurt or sick on the job, it would even be better if the government statistics were accurate, reliable and complete.
1 Comment
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The statement that “Workers’ compensation systems create incentives for employers to underreport by increasing costs for companies that show an increase in injuries” is not correct.
First, it’s not the mere reporting of injuries by employers that cause WC premiums in subsequent years to increase. It’s the compensible cost of those injuries, in terms of medical expense and disability income costs. Prompt reporting of all injuries enables WC insurers to take quick action to assure that injured workers get prompt and appropriate treatment by competent occupational injury specialists, and to enable the worker to return to work quicker. That reduces the employer’s costs, including WC insurance costs.
Second, the WC system does not depend entirely on the employer to report all injuries to the state WC authorities; the employee himself or herself can report his or her injury. Employers are obligated by law to provide information to workers to enable them to do so. If the employer has failed to report the injury to its WC insurer, but the worker does, the state will report it to the WC insurer anyway.
The most effective way for an employer to reduce its WC insurance costs is to create and maintain a safe workplace, engineer dangers out of the working environment, train and enable employees to avoid hurting themselves or others, and avoid placing such work stress on workers that they lose control and have an accident or stress injury. The second most effective is to support the worker’s quick recovery and return to work. The financial incentive to do these things is built strongly into the WC systems of the states.