Occupational injuries: is job security a factor?

Although a large number of contributing factors of occupational injury causation are explored meticulously to explain the phenomenon of higher occupational injury occurrence in some subjects, it has remained a matter of controversy.

In this study, an effort is made to explore whether job security has any contribution in explaining higher susceptibility of some workers.

This was a retrospective occupational injury record study conducted in an industry of eastern India.

Along with the study of injury records of 5 years, an interview was also conducted involving 726 workers (including permanent and temporary workers both) of the factory.

Comparison was made between permanent and temporary workers by using the Mann-Whitney U-test and the chi-square test. A theoretical model of Poisson's distribution was used to compare between expected and real occurrence.

Although two worker groups were very similar in relation to age, level of education, habits, and nature of work, accident frequency and severity rates were found to be significantly higher in temporary workers.

This study concluded that the higher accident risk of the temporary workers might have been due to the less effective experience as well as due to lack of job security inherent in such workers.