Occupational Safety

There are three main categories of occupational safety concerns: accident incidences, dangers from outside persons (such as clients) and malevolent acts from fellow workers.

17 people die at work and 16,000 are injured in the United States every day. 90% of these incidences could be prevented.

To prevent accidents workers should always use occupational safety equipment, maintain tools and equipment, obey posted warning signs, be properly trained and- I’ve said this before- be aware of their surroundings.

What are the most dangerous jobs? According to CBSNEWS.com:

Sailors and fisherman-anyone seen “The Deadliest Catch?”

Drivers of about anything- taxi’s, limos, trucks

Metal workers

Meat packers

Construction workers

Timber cutters

Airplane pilots (that one surprised me)

Water transportation operations

Electrical power installers and repairers

According to NIOSH: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health:

There are 1.7 million victims of violent crime while on duty at work. 75% of these are simple assaults while 19% are aggravated assaults. Police, corrections officers and taxi drivers are victimized at the highest rate.

In 1999 women made up 48% of the labor force, 75% worked full time, 25% part time. 40% of us are in technical, sales and administrative support, 32% in managerial and professional specialties and 17% in service occupations. So with that in mind, check out these statistics:

Homicide is the leading cause (40%) of injury death for women in the workplace! These are mainly robbery related – at grocery stores, restaurants and convenience stores. 25% are due to assaults by people they know and 16% are due to domestic violence spilling into the workplace.

Of non-fatal violence against female workers, 2/3 of all workplace violence are results of assaults on women. 70% occur in service fields, like health care and 20% in retail, like grocery stores and restaurants.

When it comes to occupational safety the first two hazards are hard to predict and usually come as a total surprise. Because of your day to day exposure to your fellow coworkers, you should be able to see these coming, and if you are not a manager or otherwise partnered with this guy I would try to avoid these people like a plague.

Unfortunately a lot of companies don’t check references before they hire, like they should- some it seems- don’t even read the application. Then when the employee starts to be a problem the managers don’t fire them as quickly as they should, letting him get away with poor behaviors simply because they don’t want to hire someone else- or worse yet, because they are afraid of the offending worker. Here are some warning signs that an employee may be a major problem:

These are just some of the warning signs of those who are more likely to “go off the deep end”. Disturbed employees who have ended up killing someone- even going on shooting sprees- displayed many of these traits and more. Of course shooting sprees have also been committed by clients, stalkers and students- those, of course- are harder to predict.

Although post office incidences helped us coin the term “Going Postal”, you should know that more shooting sprees take place at fast food restaurants than post offices. After the disasters no one wants to admit that they would have ever thought he would do such a thing, but upon an in-depth review many of these warning signs come to light.

We have to learn to trust our intuition!

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