An interesting article out of the US suggests shaming employers for egregiously violating occupational health and safety laws increases compliance. More specifically, a single press release about a severe OHS violation has the same impact as performing an additional 210 inspections. The underlying dynamic appears to be employers move to comply to avoid action by employees.
Earlier research suggested that a press release results in 73% fewer violations among nearby peer firms. The compliance effect of this shaming is stronger than the effect of actually inspecting these workplaces! A part of this effect may be that the risk to a firm of fines (which are low value and rare) is relatively low, whereas the risk of financial consequences caused by bad publicity is relatively high. Shaming also appears to lead to fewer (reported) workplace injuries.
Firms may also respond to shaming because they wish to avoid their workers taking action upon learning about injury risks (e.g., quitting, demanding higher wages). This effect appears to occur when workers have more bargaining power (i.e., where unionization rates are higher). By contrast, where workers have little bargaining power, shaming has little or no effect. This makes sense: information is unlikely to affect worker behaviour if they have no real means of putting it to use.
This research suggests that shaming Alberta employers who are egregious OHS violators would hugely amplify the effect of existing inspections and, therefore, drive down the number of Albertans who are injured on the job each year. Alberta presently has a legislative framework that allows the government to shame employers who are egregious OHS violators. To date, no government (Conservative, New Democrat, or UCP) has pursued this approach.
-- Bob Barnetson
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