USA: Employers play a deadly game

Wishing workplace injuries away is becoming the cut price alternative to genuine safety practice. Canadian hospital workers get entered in a prize raffle if they keep on turning in, in sickness or in health.

Now the Los Angeles Times has got in on the act with its own game of "safety bingo". US website Confined Space reports that from 1 October employees in the pressroom, mailroom, machine shop and other parts of the workplace will be rewarded to the tune of $50.00 a month (£30), if employees from their team do not take time off with on the job injuries.

However, "an on the job accident which results in lost time or restricted duty to a team member will result in ineligibility for the next month's game for the entire team."

Management add: "If the entire Operations Department goes for three consecutive months without a lost time or restricted duty injury, the prize per bingo following the three-month period will be $75 (£45) and six months will up the prize money to $100 (£60) per bingo."

Confined Space editor, Jordan Barab, says "incentive games like safety bingo can do more harm than just discouraging reporting. Minor injuries - the type that are most likely not to be reported - should be seen as warning signals of much more serious injuries: In a Massachusetts workplace last year, a worker was caught in an unguarded machine and crushed to death. Minor injuries that had occurred on that machine weren't being reported because the plant utilised both a safety bingo game that rewarded workers for not reporting injuries and a post-injury drug testing policy that mandated drug testing for all workers who reported injuries."

Risks 127, 11 October 2003