Home
Injury and the New World of Work

Injury and the New World of Work

Published by: UBC Press

26 b&w illustrations, 37 tables

Digital download
9780774852128
Published: October 2007

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Over the last fifty years the nature of work and work injury has changed dramatically. Since the 1980s, workers’ compensation claims have grown steadily and insurance institutions are feeling the crunch. In Injury and the New World of Work, Terrence Sullivan emphasizes the precarious line between the expansion of needs-based justice and the preservation of work-based prosperity.

The contributors to the book represent the fields of public health, sociology, anthropology, epidemiology, nursing, psychiatry, management, economics, public policy, and labour studies. They explore four general challenges to the workplace and the compensation system: the dramatic rise in disability associated with the changing nature of work; methods of preventing injury and disability; the need for rehabilitation; and the difficulty of reconciling fairness for workers and economic sustainability in a competitive era.

Injury and the New World of Work examines a broad range of research solutions and policy options for dealing with the critical state of workers’ compensation. The essays draw on recent case studies and original empirical work from Canada, situating the book within a comparative international frame of reference.

Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

Part 1: Introduction

1 Restating Disability or Disabling the State: Four Challenges / Terrence Sullivan and John Frank

Part 2: The Industrial-Epidemiological Shift

2 From Chainsaws to Keyboards: Injury and Industrial Disease in British Columbia / Aleck Ostry

3 Workforce and Workplace Change: Implications for Injuries and Compensation / Morley Gunderson and Douglas Hyatt

4 Women, Work, and Injury / Jinjoo Chung, Donald Cole and Judy Clarke

Part 3: Prevention

5 The Importance of Psychosocial Risk Factors in Injury / Michael Kerr

6 Ergonomic Interventions for Reducing Musculoskeletal Disorders / Robert Norman and Richard Wells

7 Firm-Level Organizational Practices and Work Injury / Harry Shannon

8 Joint Health and Safety Committees: Finding a Balance / John O'Grady

Part 4: Rehabilitation and Return to Work

9 Staging Treatment Interventions following Soft Tissue Injuries / Sheilah Hogg-Johnson, Donald Cole, Pierre Côté, and John Frank

10 The Natural History and Effective Treatment of Chronic Pain from Musculoskeletal Injury / Eldon Tunks, Joan Crook and Mikaela Crook

11 Effective Disability Management and Return-to-Work Practices / Ann-Sylvia Brooker, Judy Clarke, Sandra Sinclair, Victoria Pennick and Sheilah Hogg-Johnson

Part 5: Entitlement, Fairness and Sustainability

12 Determining Occupational Disorder: Can This Camel Carry More Straw? / John Frank and Andreas Maetzel

13 Fatality Benefits: Rationale and Practice / Terry Thomason

14 Psychiatric Disability and Workers' Compensation / William Gnam

Appendices

A Categories of Injury and Disease

B Gender Differences in Work Exposure and Injury

C Bradford Hill's Criteria for Assessing Evidence of Causation

D Fatality Benefit Comparisons

Contributors

Index

Terrence Sullivan is the President of the Institute for Work and Health in Toronto.

This volume presents a comprehensive look at the kinds of changes that have taken place in the labour market and summarizes the rapidly growing body of evidence regarding the links between a range of disabilities and possible work-related causes. ~Kathryn McMullen, The Disability Reporter, Winter 2000