Safety, Incentives, and the Reporting of Work-Related Injuries Among Union Carpenters: ‘‘You’re Pretty Much Screwed If You Get Hurt at Work’’

This studied how incentives and punishment for workers & supervisors influences incident reporting. Surveys were completed by 1,020 carpenter apprentices.

Use of incentives and punishments is argued to be somewhat controversial. Authors argue that the idea of rewards and punishments is rooted in ideas about most incidents being related to unsafe behaviours rather than unsafe work conditions and that people need to be offered incentives to maintain their own safety.

They argue that these ideas are largely based on early work on operant conditioning, which “failed to create lasting behavior change once the ‘‘carrots and sticks’’ were removed” (p397).

Results

Results indicated that there are multiple layers of disincentives for reporting work-related injuries, and that these disincentives “hamper understanding of risk and pose threats to workplace safety and productivity”.

Considerable evidence of fear of reprisal for reporting injuries was found. Less than half of respondents indicated that work-related injuries were reported in their current workplaces all or most of the time, and 30% said they were almost never or rarely reported.

When asked why, 64% believed that lodging workers’ compensation claims would not be viewed favourably or concerned that they would be laid off; 41% said they’d prefer to use private health insurance since it’s less trouble.

Specifically about the apprentice carpenter’s views about reporting, 64% felt comfortable reporting injuries to their supervisor without worry of reprisal, but 22% felt they couldn’t report (& 14% were unsure).

Both rewards and punishments were in place in many workplaces, with post-injury drug testing, discipline for injury or coaching focused on personal behaviours being more common than rewards. Note that these items, including behavioural coaching, was seen by the respondents as punishments.

Interestingly, injury reporting was seen to be higher on sites that had reward programs for individuals or groups but not for supervisors. Conversely, injury reporting was 50% lower on sites where injured workers were disciplined.

In workplaces with an absenteeism policy, people were 15% less likely to feel that they could report an injury without repercussions.

Indeed when it came to reporting incidents, fear of job security was reported by some, whereas others said that injuries were “part of being a carpenter”.

Further based on interviews, it was commented that “The incentive programs for crews and foremen with low injuries often lead to accidents or injuries being hidden. ‘‘Don’t report it and we’ll get a bonus at 100 days” (p392).

One person worked for a company where they had to maintain a 0% accident rate to be able to keep their contract with a major company. This person noted that “I got the impression, which was strongly implied, if I got hurt I was no longer employed" (p395).

This person further went on to say that: “They say report all injuries but we all know you have it happen more than once and you’re gone”.

Speed of work and work intensification (doing more with less resources & time) was seen as perhaps the strongest theme on having negative influence on safety. Production pressures were reported to take precedence over safety.

Interview feedback also connected the effects of low bidding of jobs to work pace and injury risk.

One comment highlighted a fear about injury reporting where job loss was seen to be possible. Not immediately, but they note that after 2-3 months when things blow over “you’re fired”. This was referred to as “Fired before you hit the ground’’.

Overall, the data indicates that apprentice carpenters document a career of high prevalence of exposure to safety incentives & punishments for injury reporting. Expectedly, projects where discipline is a response had lower reporting and higher fear of reporting.

Work intensification, high pace and low cost bidding all impacted safety and work pace. Importantly, the authors argue that “, this hazardous condition needs to be addressed, not by rewarding workers for being more careful when they are pushed, by rather by stopping this level of production pressure” (p398).

Nevertheless, besides this association, only minimal evidence was found linking injury reporting to any specific safety element or program.

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Authors: Lipscomb, H. J., Nolan, J., Patterson, D., Sticca, V., & Myers, D. J. (2013). American journal of industrial medicine, 56(4), 389-399.