Blaming the Victims of Workplace Accidents
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Historic video collection of Mark Catlin
Videos
- A Little Song About Noise
- Carelessness Causes Accidents We all Know That
- Blaming the Victims of Workplace Accidents
- Construction Workers Recall Working Around Asbestos
- Asbestos in building construction
- Dr. Irving Selikoff Pioneering Asbestos Disease Researcher
- Uses of Asbestos: Examples from the 50s and 60s
- Testing an Asbestos Suit
- Carbon Monoxide Death in an Underground Copper Mine
- Lead Exposure at the Bunker Hill Mine and Smelter
- Lead Palsy Wrist Drop
- Lead Paint Dangers
- Mold Problems after Flooding
- Radioactive Contaminated Turtles
- Hand and Foot Radiation Monitors at a Nuclear Reactor
- Decontamination after an Atomic Blast
- Radiological Site Cleanup Health and Safety Preservation Aviation Cleanup
- The Campaign to End Silicosis
- Silicosis Described
- Painting Health Hazards and Their Control
- Proper Posture
- Hand Arm Vibration Hazard Alice Hamilton
- Vibration Hazards and Control
- Man and Sound 1965 DOD
- Boilermaker's Ear
- Trench Collapse Hazard
- Application of Built Up Asbestos Roofing
- Canary used for testing for carbon monoxide
- Lead Properties and Uses
- Preventing Lead Poisoning in Bridge Construction Workers
- Childhood Lead Hazard Pioneer Researcher Herbert Needleman, MD
- Spray Painting Hazards and Air Line Respirator
Summary Statement
As in this clip, many employers today (and in the past) blame workplace accidents on workers rather than look at hazardous job conditions. In the past, based on this attitude, workers were often openly called stupid, careless and accident-prone and blamed as the cause of their injuries. With this approach, the result of most accident investigations is to blame the injured worker and the solution is to tell the worker to be more careful. This approach ignores the role of managers and employers in making key decisions in the workplace they control. However these days, this older harsh language is replaced by so called behavior-based safety programs based on the claim that 80 to 96 percent of job injuries and illnesses are caused by workers' own unsafe acts. This number has been discredited by many other studies which identify the key role of the work environment in safety and health. Behavior-based safety programs focus attention on worker carelessness and conscious or unconscious unsafe behaviors, and place the onus for a safe workplace on workers themselves. The "unsafe worker" statistics espoused by behavior-based safety consultants and repeated by employers purchasing or developing behavioral safety programs were derived from the work of insurance investigator H.W. Heinrich in the 1930s. Heinrich's research into injury causation consisted of his review of supervisors' accident reports, which critics pointed out naturally blame workers for accidents and injuries. He arrived at the statistic that 88 percent of workplace accidents and worker injuries were caused by workers' unsafe acts, numbers echoed by today's behavioral safety programs.
1934
