A new report published by the University of Massachusetts Lowell has identified seven high-priority strategies to reduce workplace accidents and ill health in the USA.
The University’s Lowell Centre for Sustainable Production conducted a year-long analysis on the successes and failures of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) 1970.
Among the strategies, that the researchers believe could improve workplace safety, the introduction of comprehensive workplace injury and illness prevention programmes. The report also identifies strategies that other agencies and organisations can pursue to improve workplace safety, including the promotion of accident prevention initiatives to ensure that employers carry out suitable risk assessments in their workplaces.
The report was sanctioned after figures released by the US Bureau of Labour and Statistics revealed more than 4000 workers died and 3.3 million suffered workplace injury or ill health in 2009.
President Obama recently ordered a review of regulations to ensure that they don’t have a negative impact on business. However, the report suggests that the current regulatory approach to protecting workers is insufficient and inadequate.
The report’s lead author, Prof David Kriebel, said: “We found that ineffective workplace health and safety protections are not simply the result of limited enforcement. They are the result of multiple overlapping factors, including conflicts between agencies, lack of worker participation in decision-making processes, the politicisation of science, and the conflicts between economic and political interests.
“As the recent investigations of the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon demonstrate, adding more inspectors or having more regulations is not necessarily the answer.”
