Subramanian A, Desai A, Prakash L, Mital A, Mital Anil
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0116, USA.
J Occup Rehabil. 2006 Mar;16(1):123-55. doi: 10.1007/s10926-005-9012-1.
The purpose of this paper is to review the current trends in non-fatal injury profiles of workers in the United States. It is generally accepted that occupational injury and illness rates are affected by many factors, such as the amount and quality of training, employee turnover rates, work experience, extent of mechanization and automation, job-related parameters, and worker gender. In the last decade, not only have the technologies used in the workplace changed significantly, there has been a greater awareness among employers and employees as to the importance of containing work injuries. Additionally, the extent of outsourcing for labor-intensive jobs has increased dramatically owing to cheaper labor costs in places such as China and Mexico. These changes have affected the manufacturing sector of US industry more than any other sector. How these changes have influenced the injury and illness profiles of the American worker is of considerable interest given the increased attention paid to work-workplace design, injury hazard control, and ergonomics in general. In this paper, we compare the injury and illness profiles of US workers separated by nearly a decade. The trends from early 1990s are compared to those from early 2000s. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics were used to compile the injury statistics. The results of our comparison show that while the absolute numbers of work-related injuries and illnesses have declined over the last 10 years, the basic trends associated with different factors remain almost unchanged. The reasons for this decline are discussed in this paper.
本文旨在回顾美国工人非致命伤害情况的当前趋势。人们普遍认为，职业伤害和疾病发生率受多种因素影响，如培训的数量和质量、员工流动率、工作经验、机械化和自动化程度、与工作相关的参数以及工人性别。在过去十年中，不仅工作场所使用的技术发生了显著变化，雇主和员工对控制工伤重要性的认识也有所提高。此外，由于中国和墨西哥等地劳动力成本较低，劳动密集型工作的外包程度大幅增加。这些变化对美国工业的制造业影响大于其他任何部门。鉴于人们对工作场所设计、伤害风险控制和总体人体工程学的关注度不断提高，这些变化如何影响美国工人的伤害和疾病情况备受关注。在本文中，我们比较了相隔近十年的美国工人的伤害和疾病情况。将20世纪90年代初的趋势与21世纪初的趋势进行了比较。使用劳工统计局的数据编制了伤害统计数据。我们的比较结果表明，虽然过去10年与工作相关的伤害和疾病的绝对数量有所下降，但与不同因素相关的基本趋势几乎保持不变。本文讨论了这种下降的原因。
