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The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada: Title Page

The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada
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  • Project HomePolitical Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada
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table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Acknowledgements
  3. Introduction
    1. Perspectives on workplace injury
    2. Purpose of this book
    3. Preventing workplace injury
    4. Compensating workplace injury
    5. Major conclusions
  4. Part One. Employment Relationships in Canada
    1. Employment in a capitalist economy
    2. The labour market and the wage-rate bargain
    3. The labour process and the wage-effort bargain
    4. Power and rules in employment
    5. The common law
    6. Changing definitions of work
    7. Workplace safety and the profit motive
    8. Compensation through the courts
    9. Alternatives to litigation
    10. Do employers intentionally transfer costs?
    11. Conclusion
  5. Part Two. Preventing Workplace Injury
    1. Development of occupational health and safety in Canada
      1. Perspectives on risk
      2. Market model of occupational health and safety
      3. Inevitability and the careless worker
      4. The social construction of accidents
      5. Pressure for state regulation
      6. The Factory Acts
      7. Injury compensation
      8. Why workers’ compensation?
      9. Partial self-regulation
      10. Hoggs Hollow and Elliot Lake
      11. The external responsibility system
      12. The internal responsibility system
    2. Canada’s OHS system today
      1. Duties and obligations
      2. Health and safety standards
      3. External responsibility system
      4. Internal system and the three rights
      5. Partnership model and incentives
    3. Conclusion
  6. Part Three. Critique of OHS in Canada
    1. Recognizing injury and hazards
      1. How many injuries?
      2. Who gets hurt affects injury recognition
      3. The type of injury and its cost also affect recognition
      4. Employers may impede injury recognition
      5. The social construction of injury and hazards
      6. Employer tactics in contesting injury recognition
      7. Perpetuating the careless worker myth
      8. Identifying occupational cancer
      9. Preventing occupational cancer
      10. Constructing cancer as a non-issue
      11. Conceptual models of injury
      12. Limits to the biomedical model
    2. Regulating workplace hazards
      1. Approaches to regulation
      2. Limits on regulation
      3. The internal responsibility system
      4. Knowledge is power?
      5. Joint health and safety committees
      6. The right to refuse
      7. Employer responses to refusals
      8. Refusal as a weak right
      9. Effectiveness of the internal system
      10. Exposure levels and threshold limit values
      11. Are exposure levels safe?
      12. Why do exposure levels always go down?
      13. Inspections and inspectors
      14. Bias in inspections
      15. The effect of orders
      16. Prosecution and fines
      17. Partnerships and the mantra of “safety pays”
      18. Creating evidence of safe workplaces
      19. Disabling injury rate and severity
      20. Measures as conceptual technologies
      21. Why use inadequate measures?
    3. Conclusion
  7. Part Four. Political Economy of Preventing Workplace Injury
    1. Why regulate ineffectively?
      1. Context of state action
      2. Regulation of workplace injury
      3. Inadequate standards
      4. Regulation of hazards in the workplace
      5. Ignorant and reckless?
      6. Social sanction of workplace injury
      7. Ineffective penalties
      8. Why regulate ineffectively?
      9. How is this legitimized?
    2. Injury in the new economy
      1. Work intensification
      2. Precarious employment increases risks
      3. What do intensification and precarious employment tell us?
    3. Conclusion
  8. Part Five. Compensation of Workplace Injury
    1. Workers’ compensation in Canada
      1. Overview of workers’ compensation
      2. Development of workers’ compensation in Canada
      3. Workers’ compensation as a compromise
    2. Injury recognition revisited
      1. Determining compensability
      2. “Arises and occurs”
      3. Balance of probabilities and presumptions
      4. Politics of injury recognition
      5. Work-related musculoskeletal disorders and causation
      6. Occupational diseases
      7. Limiting liability: Psychological injuries
      8. Chronic pain syndrome
    3. Conclusion
  9. Part Six. Worker Benefits and Claims Management
    1. Earnings-loss benefits
      1. Deeming earnings
      2. Permanent disabilities and the dual-award system
    2. Other benefits
      1. Vocational rehabilitation and early return to work
      2. Is early return to work a good idea?
      3. The political economy of ERTW
      4. Medical services
      5. Fatalities
    3. Funding workers’ compensation
      1. Employer premiums
      2. Rising premiums
      3. Moral hazard
      4. Experience-rating schemes
      5. Effect of experience rating on injury frequency
      6. Effect of experience rating on injury duration
      7. Rationale for experience rating
    4. Conclusion
  10. Part Seven. Managing Workers via Injury Compensation
    1. Claim adjudication and administration
      1. Impeding a shared understanding
      2. Mobilizing workers
      3. Role of trade unions
    2. Appeals
      1. Internal reviews and external appeals
      2. How appeal processes advantage employers
      3. Adversarialism in appeals
      4. Political economy of appeals
      5. Impact on workers
    3. Privatization and abolishment
      1. Argument for returning to tort
      2. Operation of tort-based compensation
      3. Comparing tort and workers’ compensation
      4. Privatization
      5. Impact of privatization
      6. Who chooses the insurer?
      7. Cost savings under privatization
      8. Economic globalization as an explanation
      9. Managing worker demands
    4. Precarious employment
      1. Precarious work
      2. Precarious work and worker-related injuries
      3. Precarious work and workers’ compensation
      4. Implications of precarious work for workers’ compensation
    5. Conclusion
  11. Part Eight. Conclusion
    1. Why are workers injured on the job?
    2. Why don’t government injury-prevention efforts work?
    3. Do governments actually prioritize profit over safety?
    4. Why don’t workers call “hooey” on this approach?
    5. Can workers protect themselves?
    6. Do safety incentives reduce injuries?
    7. But how does government legitimize prioritizing profit over safety?
    8. Who benefits from injury compensation? And how?
    9. How does compensation legitimize limiting employer liability?
    10. Occupational disease as a microcosm
    11. So what?
    12. Are workers our most valuable resource?
    13. Is there really no such thing as an accident?
    14. The political economy of workplace injury
  12. Notes
  13. Select Bibliography
  14. Index

the POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WORKPLACE INJURY IN CANADA

Dr. Bob Barnetson

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