09/ 11/ 2006
by Charles R. McConnell
How safe are you and your employees at work? Which occupations and industries are the most dangerous, and which are safest? Are workers in small businesses any safer than those in large businesses? And what can you do within your workplace to minimize the chances of a job-related injury?
All but the last of these questions can be answered with information abstracted from various reports and studies of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The question concerning the individual workplace can be fully addressed only within that workplace itself.
As to whether workers in small businesses are safer than those in large businesses, the size of the business seems to have little influence on safety. Rather, what determines relative safety in the workplace is the nature of the business and the kinds of occupations employed. For example, the employees of a small company engaged in interstate trucking will be more at risk than those of a large wholesale trade business.
In extracting data about workplace safety from the reports and studies of the BLS, it's necessary to examine two forms of safety statistics and relate them to each other and to their industries. There are separate records for fatal occupational injuries and for non-fatal occupational injuries and illnesses. Also, there's more than one way of identifying hazardous occupations, and depending on the method used, different occupations can appear as most hazardous.
During 2004, a total of 5,703 fatal work injuries were recorded in the United States, a 2 percent increase over 2003 (complete figures for 2005 were not readily available). Overall, fatalities occurred in 2004 at the rate of 4.1 per 100,000 workers, down from 5.3 per 100,000 workers ten years earlier. The leading cause was highway accidents, about 25 percent of work-related deaths in 2004. The second leading cause was falls, about 14 percent of work-related deaths that year.
It's necessary to examine rankings of both occupations and industries; looking at one or the other alone doesn't provide a clear picture of relative risk. The most recent listing of industry groups ranked by fatalities per 100,000 workers follows:
| Agriculture (including forestry, fishing, and hunting) | 30.1 |
| Mining | 28.3 |
| Transportation and warehousing | 17.8 |
| Construction | 11.9 |
| Utilities | 6.1 |
| Wholesale trade | 4.4 |
| Professional and business services | 3.2 |
| Other services (excluding public administration) | 3.0 |
| Manufacturing | 2.8 |
| Government | 2.5 |
Although the numbers change slightly from year to year, the relative positions of the various industries seldom change. But these figures are deceiving because of the way occupations are grouped. For example, according to the list, "transportation and warehousing" experienced an average 17.8 fatalities per 100,000 workers for 2004. However, extracting "truck drivers" from that total reveals a fatality rate for truck drivers of 26.2 deaths per 100,000 workers.
When individual occupations are extracted from industry data and examined for relative risk, the hazards become clearer. Here "relative risk" means the comparison of any occupation with the average of all occupations. Setting the average of all occupations at 1.0, the relative risks of the 10 most dangerous jobs are as follows:
| Commercial fishers | 21.3 |
| Timber cutters | 20.6 |
| Airplane pilots | 19.9 |
| Structural metal workers | 13.1 |
| Taxi drivers | 9.5 |
| Construction workers | 8.1 |
| Roofers | 5.9 |
| Electric power workers | 5.7 |
| Truck drivers | 5.3 |
| Farm workers | 5.1 |
So someone employed in commercial fishing is 21 times more likely to suffer a fatal work-related injury than the average worker and roughly four times more likely than a truck driver to do so. Also, the jobs experiencing the highest rates of both fatalities and non-fatal injuries are found in outdoor occupations.
Fatal or otherwise, on-the-job injuries cost American business nearly one billion dollars per week in payments to employees and their health-care providers. What can the individual business do? An employer can start by ensuring compliance with the health and safety standards set forth by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and specifically with the "general duty clause" requiring employers to provide a place of employment free from recognized hazards. Doing so requires:
- Compliance with all occupational health, safety and environmental laws
- Making control and elimination of identified health and safety risks an ongoing priority
- Educating employees on matters of occupational health and safety and maintaining their safety consciousness
- Maintaining all company facilities in a manner that provides the safest working environment possible
Finally, as expressed in the title of this article, don't cut corners. Too many workplace accidents occur because someone takes the short path by ignoring safety rules, disdaining protective equipment or taking shortcuts with procedures to get something done supposedly faster and perhaps cheaper. There is, of course, a cost involved in doing things the right way--the safe way--but the cost of cutting corners can be greater. Just ask the manager or business owner who has had to fund lifetime reserves for two or three significant workers' compensation cases.
