Coal Mine Safety: Do Unions Make a Difference?

Morantz, Alison D.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1846700

Cited by 14 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…While workers at these plants are organised into at least one, and arguably more, level of organisation, department information was not available to us. We collapsed 56 plants into types according to the nature of the work done in the plant and modelled unionisation of the plants, with the hypothesis that stronger safety programming at unionised plants would result in lower injury rates 12 24. While we do not know if these plant-level variables are the most meaningful plant-level exposures in this workforce, by using available data from an existing survey, we have made some progress in parsing plants’ contributions to individuals’ injury rates.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 3 Physical job demands, worker characteristics such as age, sex, health, job experience and work hours are among the types of predictors that have been linked to risk for occupational injury. 4–7 Others have reported on the roles of job strain 8 and workplace factors such as safety climate, 9 10 training 11 and unionisation 12 in different settings. A meta-analysis found that employee ‘engagement’ and job satisfaction were inversely and significantly correlated with lost workdays due to safety incidents.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Individual-level and plant-level predictors of acute, traumatic occupational injuries in a manufacturing cohort

et al. 2014

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ObjectivesWorkplace and contextual factors that may affect risk for worker injury are not well described. This study used results from an employee job satisfaction survey to construct aggregate indicators of the work environment and estimate the relative contribution of those factors to injury rates in a manufacturing cohort.MethodsPrincipal components analysis was used to construct four plant-level factors from responses to a 32 question survey of the entire workforce, administered in 2006. Multilevel Poisson regression was used to evaluate the relationship between injury rate, individual-level and plant-level risk factors, unionisation and plant type.ResultsPlant-level ‘work stress’ (incident rate ratio (IRR)=0.50, 95% CI 0.28 to 0.90) was significant in the multilevel model, indicating the rate of injury for an average individual in that plant was halved (conditional on plant) when job stress decreased by a tertile. ‘Overall satisfaction’, ‘work environment’ and ‘perception of supervisor’ showed the same trend but were not significant. Unionisation was protective (IRR=0.40, 95% CI 0.17 to 0.95) as was any plant type compared with smelter.ConclusionsWe demonstrated utility of data from a human resources survey to construct indicators of the work environment. Our research suggests that aspects of the work environment, particularly work stress and unionisation, may have a significant effect on risk for occupational injury, emphasising the need for further multilevel studies. Our work would suggest monitoring of employee perceptions of job stress and the possible inclusion of stress management as a component of risk reduction programmes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual-level and plant-level predictors of acute, traumatic occupational injuries in a manufacturing cohort

et al. 2014

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“…The literature indicates that labor unions use their political influence and engage actively through collective bargaining, representation in health and safety committees, and the undertaking of relevant actions in enhancing workplace safety (Donado, 2007). In addition, unions can promote OSH educational activities, disseminate OSH information to workers, and contribute to the enforcement and implementation of OSH regulations (Morantz, 2013). Theory predicts that unions contribute to the improvement of working conditions, obtain higher compensation benefits for employees who suffered work-related health problems, and in general represent effectively employees' interests regarding health and safety at the workplace (Fenn and Ashby, 2004;Freeman, 2004;Hirsch et al, 1997;Morse et al, 2003).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They argue that highly unionized enterprises show high reporting of injuries at work because they enjoy higher compensation due to the union representation. Toward this end, Morantz (2013) finds that unionization is associated with a large decrease in traumatic injuries and overall fatalities in the coal mine industry for the USA. However, she also reports higher total and non-traumatic injury rates, which are attributed to the higher reporting rates in the unionized industries.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Join the Union and Be Safe: The Effects of Unionization on Occupational Safety and Health in the European Union

Economou

Theodossiou

2015

Labour

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This paper investigates the effect of unionization on occupational safety and health, as measured by the fatal and non-fatal work accidents, after controlling for the country's gross domestic product. It uses a panel sample of 10 European Union countries, for the period 1982-2006. The study takes into account the time persistence in work injuries and the endogenous nature of the work injuries-union density relationship. In addition, the effect of union density is decomposed into a temporary and permanent effect. It is shown that increasing union density is associated with a decrease in the number of both fatal and non-fatal work injuries.

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