Skip to main content

The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada: Contents

The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada
Contents
    • Notifications
    • Privacy

“Contents” in “The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada”

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Perspectives on workplace injury

Purpose of this book

Preventing workplace injury

Compensating workplace injury

Major conclusions

ONE
Employment Relationships in Canada

Employment in a capitalist economy

The labour market and the wage-rate bargain

The labour process and the wage-effort bargain

Power and rules in employment

The common law

Changing definitions of work

Workplace safety and the profit motive

Compensation through the courts

Alternatives to litigation

Do employers intentionally transfer costs?

Conclusion

TWO
Preventing Workplace Injury

Development of occupational health and safety in Canada

Perspectives on risk

Market model of occupational health and safety

Inevitability and the careless worker

The social construction of accidents

Pressure for state regulation

The Factory Acts

Injury compensation

Why workers’ compensation?

Partial self-regulation

Hoggs Hollow and Elliot Lake

The external responsibility system

The internal responsibility system

Canada’s OHS system today

Duties and obligations

Health and safety standards

External responsibility system

Internal system and the three rights

Partnership model and incentives

Conclusion

THREE
Critique of OHS in Canada

Recognizing injury and hazards

How many injuries?

Who gets hurt affects injury recognition

The type of injury and its cost also affect recognition

Employers may impede injury recognition

The social construction of injury and hazards

Employer tactics in contesting injury recognition

Perpetuating the careless worker myth

Identifying occupational cancer

Preventing occupational cancer

Constructing cancer as a non-issue

Conceptual models of injury

Limits to the biomedical model

Regulating workplace hazards

Approaches to regulation

Limits on regulation

The internal responsibility system

Knowledge is power?

Joint health and safety committees

The right to refuse

Employer responses to refusals

Refusal as a weak right

Effectiveness of the internal system

Exposure levels and threshold limit values

Are exposure levels safe?

Why do exposure levels always go down?

Inspections and inspectors

Bias in inspections

The effect of orders

Prosecution and fines

Partnerships and the mantra of “safety pays”

Creating evidence of safe workplaces

Disabling injury rate and severity

Measures as conceptual technologies

Why use inadequate measures?

Conclusion

FOUR
Political Economy of Preventing Workplace Injury

Why regulate ineffectively?

Context of state action

Regulation of workplace injury

Inadequate standards

Regulation of hazards in the workplace

Ignorant and reckless?

Social sanction of workplace injury

Ineffective penalties

Why regulate ineffectively?

How is this legitimized?

Injury in the new economy

Work intensification

Precarious employment increases risks

What do intensification and precarious employment tell us?

Conclusion

FIVE
Compensation of Workplace Injury

Workers’ compensation in Canada

Overview of workers’ compensation

Development of workers’ compensation in Canada

Workers’ compensation as a compromise

Injury recognition revisited

Determining compensability

“Arises and occurs”

Balance of probabilities and presumptions

Politics of injury recognition

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders and causation

Occupational diseases

Limiting liability: Psychological injuries

Chronic pain syndrome

Conclusion

SIX
Worker Benefits and Claims Management

Earnings-loss benefits

Deeming earnings

Permanent disabilities and the dual-award system

Other benefits

Vocational rehabilitation and early return to work

Is early return to work a good idea?

The political economy of ERTW

Medical services

Fatalities

Funding workers’ compensation

Employer premiums

Rising premiums

Moral hazard

Experience-rating schemes

Effect of experience rating on injury frequency

Effect of experience rating on injury duration

Rationale for experience rating

Conclusion

SEVEN
Managing Workers via Injury Compensation

Claim adjudication and administration

Impeding a shared understanding

Mobilizing workers

Role of trade unions

Appeals

Internal reviews and external appeals

How appeal processes advantage employers

Adversarialism in appeals

Political economy of appeals

Impact on workers

Privatization and abolishment

Argument for returning to tort

Operation of tort-based compensation

Comparing tort and workers’ compensation

Privatization

Impact of privatization

Who chooses the insurer?

Cost savings under privatization

Economic globalization as an explanation

Managing worker demands

Precarious employment

Precarious work

Precarious work and worker-related injuries

Precarious work and workers’ compensation

Implications of precarious work for workers’ compensation

Conclusion

EIGHT
Conclusion

Why are workers injured on the job?

Why don’t government injury-prevention efforts work?

Do governments actually prioritize profit over safety?

Why don’t workers call “hooey” on this approach?

Can workers protect themselves?

Do safety incentives reduce injuries?

But how does government legitimize prioritizing profit over safety?

Who benefits from injury compensation? And how?

How does compensation legitimize limiting employer liability?

Occupational disease as a microcosm

So what?

Are workers our most valuable resource?

Is there really no such thing as an accident?

The political economy of workplace injury

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

Next Chapter
Acknowledgements
PreviousNext
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CA). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.
Powered by Manifold Scholarship. Learn more at
Opens in new tab or windowmanifoldapp.org
Manifold uses cookies

We use cookies to analyze our traffic. Please decide if you are willing to accept cookies from our website. You can change this setting anytime in Privacy Settings.