Teens in the workforce

Employment (Economic theory) ; Youth - Employment

Coal Mine Safety: Do Unions Make a Difference?

Although the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) has always advocated strongly for miners’ safety, the empirical literature contains no evidence that unionization reduced mine injuries or fatalities during the 1970s and ‘80s. The author uses an updated methodology and a more comprehensive data set than previous studies to examine the relationship between unionization and underground, bituminous coal mine safety from 1993 to 2010. She finds that unionization predicts a substantial and statistically significant decline in traumatic injuries and fatalities, the two safety measures that are the least prone to reporting bias. These results are especially pronounced among larger mines. Overall, unionization is associated with a 14 to 32% drop in traumatic injuries and a 29 to 83% drop in fatalities. Yet unionization also predicts higher total and nontraumatic injuries, suggesting that injury reporting practices differ between union and nonunion mines

Putting Data to Work for Workers: The Role of Information Technology in U.S. Worker Protection Agencies

The adoption by the Department of Labor (DOL) of new Strategic Goals in 2010 represented an important turning point in its history. In a more thoroughgoing fashion than ever before, DOL has embraced the principle that outcomes and impacts, not outputs, are the criteria by which its worker protection efforts should be judged. The Department’s recently adopted New Approach specifies that rigorous data analysis and program evaluation, informed by social scientific research methods, are now the preferred metrics for quantifying the Department’s effects on the regulated community. Notably absent from the Agency’s public documentation, however, is any detailed evaluation of the role of information technology in supporting its enforcement agenda. In this article, the author seeks to fill this void by describing how a comprehensive reevaluation of DOL’s data infrastructure and IT capabilities could further the principles embodied in the New Approach. She proposes four criteria – quality, scope, accessibility, and interconnectivity – for assessing the performance of each regulatory IT system; enumerates ways in which each criterion can be observed and measured; identifies ways in which DOL’s current data systems fall short; and suggests promising avenues for reform. The author also highlights important barriers that impede systemic IT change and suggests ways in which they might be overcome

Has Devolution Injured American Workers? State and Federal Enforcement of Construction Safety

Although the issue of regulatory devolution has received much scholarly scrutiny, rigorous empirical studies of its effects on important policy outcomes are scarce. This article explores the effects of partial regulatory devolution in the occupational safety arena by exploiting a unique historical anomaly whereby some US states enforce protective labor regulations that are enforced elsewhere by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Analyzing data from the construction industry, this article contains several important findings. First, state inspectors use traditional enforcement tools more sparingly than their federal counterparts, typically citing fewer violations and collecting lower fines per violation. Second, although federal enforcement significantly lowers the estimated frequency of nonfatal construction injuries, it also predicts a significant increase in occupational fatalities. I suggest that although higher underreporting of nonfatal injuries in federally regulated states could explain this puzzling finding, it is equally possible that different regulatory styles have different "comparative advantages" in deterring nonfatal injuries on one hand and occupational fatalities on the other. (JEL D73, D78, H73, I18, J08, J28, J88, K00, K23, K31, K32, L51, and L74) The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected], Oxford University Press.