Workplace injury, illness costs being foisted on workers, government, OSHA's Michaels says
Workers and taxpayers writ large are shouldering the costs of workplace injuries and illnesses, as the changing nature of work leaves states and employers with increasingly less liability, according to a report released today by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The OSHA report, “Adding Inequality to Injury: The Costs of Failing to Protect Workers on the Job,” notes that employer-provided workers’ compensation insurance benefits cover only 21 percent of the actual costs of a workplace injury or illness, including lost wages, medical expenses and rehabilitation.
Only a fraction of workers apply for or receive benefits, the report says, because of job insecurity, fear of retaliation from employers, or because they don’t know they’re entitled to such benefits. As many as 97 percent of work-related illnesses go uncompensated because symptoms are often linked to workplace exposures long after employment ends, if they are linked at all.
Most of the costs of injuries and illnesses are borne by workers themselves, according to the report. Government programs such as Social Security Disability Insurance and Medicaid cover 16 percent, private health insurance 13 percent.
“By forcing the costs of injury and illness onto workers, their families and the taxpayer, unsafe employers have fewer incentives to eliminate workplace hazards and actually prevent injuries and illnesses from occurring,” the report says. “Under this broken system, these workers, their families and the taxpayer subsidize unsafe employers, increasing the likelihood that even more workers will be injured or made sick.”
The vulnerability is more pronounced in the modern workplace where contract and temporary workers who are often misclassified or assigned to new workplaces more frequently. Employers are often not responsible for insuring temporary workers – that falls to staffing agencies – meaning there’s little incentive to invest in training. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that even as workplace deaths declined overall in 2013, deaths among contract workers and Hispanic workers increased.
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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
