Perspectives on workplace injury
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
Workplace safety and the profit motive
Compensation through the courts
Do employers intentionally transfer costs?
TWO
Preventing Workplace Injury
Development of occupational health and safety in Canada
Market model of occupational health and safety
Inevitability and the careless worker
The social construction of accidents
The external responsibility system
The internal responsibility system
External responsibility system
Internal system and the three rights
Partnership model and incentives
THREE
Critique of OHS in Canada
Recognizing injury and hazards
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
Limits to the biomedical model
The internal responsibility system
Joint health and safety committees
Employer responses to refusals
Effectiveness of the internal system
Exposure levels and threshold limit values
Why do exposure levels always go down?
Partnerships and the mantra of “safety pays”
Creating evidence of safe workplaces
Disabling injury rate and severity
Measures as conceptual technologies
FOUR
Political Economy of Preventing Workplace Injury
Regulation of workplace injury
Regulation of hazards in the workplace
Social sanction of workplace injury
Precarious employment increases risks
What do intensification and precarious employment tell us?
FIVE
Compensation of Workplace Injury
Workers’ compensation in Canada
Overview of workers’ compensation
Development of workers’ compensation in Canada
Workers’ compensation as a compromise
Balance of probabilities and presumptions
Politics of injury recognition
Work-related musculoskeletal disorders and causation
Limiting liability: Psychological injuries
SIX
Worker Benefits and Claims Management
Permanent disabilities and the dual-award system
Vocational rehabilitation and early return to work
Is early return to work a good idea?
Effect of experience rating on injury frequency
Effect of experience rating on injury duration
Rationale for experience rating
SEVEN
Managing Workers via Injury Compensation
Claim adjudication and administration
Impeding a shared understanding
Internal reviews and external appeals
How appeal processes advantage employers
Argument for returning to tort
Operation of tort-based compensation
Comparing tort and workers’ compensation
Cost savings under privatization
Economic globalization as an explanation
Precarious work and worker-related injuries
Precarious work and workers’ compensation
Implications of precarious work for workers’ compensation
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
Are workers our most valuable resource?
Is there really no such thing as an accident?