Making Companies Safe - what works? (CCA ... - Unite the Union

Support for these findings comes from a number of methodologically rigorous studies of the
impact of regulation on OHS outcomes in the US. For instance, Lewis-Beck and Alford
conducted an analysis of American coal mine legislation between 1940 and 1970, and found
that a major factor in reducing the level of fatalities was the size of the Federal government’s
budget allocation to health and safety regulation and the seriousness of enforcement
measures taken. 18 Lewis-Beck and Alford’s findings were confirmed in a study by Perry, who
concludes that:
“The research indicates that strong safety laws reduce coal-mine fatalities and
that, if laws are strong, coal-mine fatalities decrease with increases in Federal
spending on mine health and safety.” 19
And in one of the largest and most rigorous studies to have been undertaken on the impact
of enforcement by the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
on workplace injuries, Gray and Scholz analysed data on injuries and OSHA inspections
between 1979 and 1985 for a panel of 6,842 large manufacturing plants. 20 Having controlled
for potential biases, they found that inspections imposing penalties induced a 22% decline in
injuries in inspected plants during the following few years.
Similarly, in a more recent analysis, Baggs et al. investigated the impact of OSHA enforcement
and consultation activities on workers’ compensation claims rates for all employers in
Washington State. They found, after controlling for previous claims rate and average size, that
claims rates for employers who had been subject to OSHA enforcement activity declined by
22.5% for fixed-site employers and by 12.5% for non-fixed-site employers compared to
reductions in claims rate of 7% and 7.4% respectively for those employers with no
enforcement activity. The differences in reductions in claims rates – between employers
subject to OSHA enforcement and employers that were not – were statistically significant.
Interestingly, the researchers also found that OSHA consultation activities (that is, activity
where there was no threat or exercise of enforcement action) were not associated with a
greater decline in compensable claims rates. 21
These, and other studies, 22 indicate that consultation activity and brief inspections not
resulting in penalties have no injury reducing effects. Moreover, there are studies which show
that inspections with no penalties may result in higher injury rates. 23
Robust findings that OSHA enforcement has a strong and positive impact on worker’s health
and safety are particularly interesting in view of the fact that a number of academic writers
have criticized OSHA enforcement for being overly punitive and adversarial towards business.
They argue that such an approach is both unnecessary and counter-productive since it risks
losing the cooperation of industry and produces an instrumentalist response to compliance
whereby companies will be motivated to address only the violations they have been cited for
but will not be motivated to move beyond this minimal compliance. 24
OSHA’s style of enforcement is contrasted with the more ‘compliance-oriented approach’ of
the UK regulatory authorities, where inspectors seek to secure compliance primarily through
persuasion and co-operation rather than through strict enforcement and legal sanctions. 25
Academics such as Bardach and Kagan in the US and Hawkins in the UK have argued that the
compliance approach to regulation, which typifies regulatory practice in the UK, is more effective
than sanctioning or deterrence-based strategies, but this has been disputed by Pearce and
Tombs who point out that there is very little objective support for this proposition, and that
what evidence there is comes primarily from regulators and the business community itself.
This is also the view of a recent OECD report, which concluded that these ‘perception’
studies were:
“based on anecdotal rather than systematic evidence and [seem] to depend
partially on defining being ‘in compliance’ as being substantially in compliance,
and ignoring smaller ongoing violations.” 26
One exception to this, discussed in the OECD report, is a systematic quantitative empirical
study of nursing home regulation, which showed that when inspection teams used
co-operative strategies of trust and ‘restorative justice’ non-compliance was reduced by 39% 43