WORKPLACE SAFETY

Workplace Safety

Workplace Safety

Introduction

Highly publicized job accidents, such as mining disasters, create the impression that Workplace Safety is a haphazard enterprise. Although accidents are random events, Workplace Safety levels are governed by a variety of social institutions and display systematic patterns across time and across different types of industry. Thus, the probability of occupational injuries and illnesses varies in a quite predictable manner even though the occurrence of particular accidents usually cannot be foreseen. (DiBerardinis 2008, 96)

From the standpoint of economic analysis, firms provide specific safety levels by striking a balance between the costs to the firm of accidents and the costs of providing greater safety. The differences across industries in the costs of providing safety account for the higher risk levels of industries such as mining and construction, where eliminating risks is very costly, as compared to safer industries such as banking. Firms will incur these costs to promote safety if they have a financial incentive to do so. The chief sources of the financial incentives that lead firms to provide a safe workplace are wage premiums that they pay to workers on risky jobs, workers' compensation costs, and government health and safety regulations.

Thesis Statement

The workplace produces distinctive difficulties for workers health but virtually all its hazards are manageable and can be controlled or prevented.

Hypotheses

All workplace hazards are not manageable and cannot be controlled or prevented.

All workplace hazards are manageable and can be controlled or prevented.

Not all but some workplace hazards are manageable and can be controlled or prevented.

Questions continue as to the best suitable method to conceptualize and make workplace safety active. Workplace safety is often calculated as the amount of lost time from work, injuries, and fatalities or in other words, accidents. Workplace safety is typically considered as the nonappearance of fatalities and injuries, or accidents. Another method of measuring and considering workplace safety which may improve research and theory is feasible by concentrating on safety-related behaviors rather than the effects of not working carefully.

Research Method

Planning, Sampling, Data Collection And Evaluation

The data collected for this study was based on simple random sampling. A small representative data sample was collected. The sample size was fifteen and the data was collected from surveys, observations, or historical records. Twenty questionnaires were distributed among the sample (workers, managers and other related persons). Later, the data results was summarized with inferential statistics.

Discussion

The data collected showed that workers require higher pay, or compensating differentials, to be attracted to dangerous jobs. This wage premium usually is not in the form of hazard pay but rather is part of the higher overall pay package required to attract workers to risky jobs. In the USA, these wage premiums totalled 129 billion dollars in 2000, or about 5 percent of all worker wages. Studies have documented similar but lower wage premiums throughout the world in countries ranging from India and Taiwan to the America. (Manuele, 2002)

A useful shorthand puts these wage premiums in perspective: Suppose that the average ...