Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with No Detectable Job Loss

Abstract

Controversy surrounds occupational health and safety regulators, with some observers claiming that workplace regulations damage firms' competitiveness and destroy jobs and others arguing that they make workplaces safer at little cost to employers and employees. We analyzed a natural field experiment to examine how workplace safety inspections affected injury rates and other outcomes. We compared 409 randomly inspected establishments in California with 409 matched-control establishments that were eligible, but not chosen, for inspection. Compared with controls, randomly inspected employers experienced a 9.4% decline in injury rates (95% confidence interval = -0.177 to -0.021) and a 26% reduction in injury cost (95% confidence interval = -0.513 to -0.083). We find no evidence that these improvements came at the expense of employment, sales, credit ratings, or firm survival.

Systematic review of qualitative literature on occupational health and safety legislation and regulatory enforcement planning and implementation

“…Across these arrangements, contextual conditions shape OHS regulatory and enforcement processes, including the changing nature of work and risks and how workplace parties engage with OHS design and implementation (2,3) Research studies on OHS legislation and enforcement have mainly drawn on quantitative methods and addressed the effectiveness, patterns, and cost of various enforcement strategies. Studies have considered what inspection strategies are associated with regulation compliance and reduced work injury rates, the relative effectiveness of enforcement (eg, inspections, penalties) versus consultation and advice (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9), and inspection sequence and frequency (10). Studies have also examined inspection patterns across economic conditions, business size and risk (11,12) and whether OHS inspections have a negative effect on firm productivity (8).…”

“…Studies have considered what inspection strategies are associated with regulation compliance and reduced work injury rates, the relative effectiveness of enforcement (eg, inspections, penalties) versus consultation and advice (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9), and inspection sequence and frequency (10). Studies have also examined inspection patterns across economic conditions, business size and risk (11,12) and whether OHS inspections have a negative effect on firm productivity (8).…”

Embargos e Interdições em Canteiros de Obras: Uma Perspectiva Sistêmica

“…Em parte, isso se deve a dificuldades metodológicas de isolar o efeito de inspeções. Um dos principais estudos quantitativos acerca do tema foi realizado por Levine et al (2012) em uma grande amostra de empresas de vários setores nos EUA. As conclusões apontaram que as inspeções reduziram as taxas de acidentes, com nenhuma evidência de impactos negativos em termos de redução de empregos, vendas ou sobrevivência da empresa.…”

Assessing the Quality of Quality Assessment: The Role of Scheduling

“…Our focus on how scheduling affects inspector stringency introduces the operational lens of scheduling to the literature examining inspector bias, which has otherwise largely focused on experience or other sociological and economic factors (e.g., Hugill 2016, Ball, Siemsen, andShah 2017). Our examination of how operational decisions affect inspector behavior also contributes to the literature on behavioral operations, which emphasizes the importance of human behavior in operations management decisions (Bendoly, Donohue, and Schultz 2006, Gino and Pisano Anand, Gray, and Siemsen 2011, Gray, Siemsen, and Vasudeva 2015, occupational health and safety regulations (e.g., Ko, Mendeloff, andGray 2010, Levine, Toffel, andJohnson 2012), and environmental regulations (for a review, see Shimshack 2014). Inspections have also been shown to have durable and cumulative beneficial effects on process control and compliance, with successive inspections yielding continuous improvement in working conditions as establishments resolve the concerns identified in inspections (Ko, Mendeloff, andGray 2010, Toffel, Short, andOuellet 2015).…”