Do government regulations in the workplace protect employees and consumers, or does the high cost of compliance merely drive companies to layoffs and bankruptcy? Proponents of each argument make their cases based on passion and little else since the available studies on the issue have been biased in one way or another. Now, a new study designed to produce more objective results has shown that random safety inspections do indeed improve safety without leading to burdensome expense or job loss. Some scientists say the randomized, controlled study design could be a model for testing whether proposed future regulations are likely to be effective.
Most workplace inspections are done by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency tasked with setting and enforcing safety standards, or by state agencies approved by OSHA. But the efficacy of these inspections is difficult to study in an unbiased way, says Michael Toffel, an environmental management expert at Harvard Business School. Most safety regulators don’t inspect companies at random and instead typically focus on those that have accidents or where workers have filed complaints. Afterward, injury rates tend to revert back to whatever they were before the incident occurred, even without an OSHA inspection. So researchers could infer that the inspection played a bigger role in the reduction of injuries than it actually did.
To continue reading, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment