Science：随机检查可减少工作场所的损伤

5月18日，国际著名杂志Science在线刊登了国外研究人员的最新研究成果“Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with No Detectable Job Loss，”，文章中，研究者表示随机检查可减少工作场所的损伤。

这项新的研究披露，政府的安全检查可在不伤害公司竞争力的情况下减少工人的受伤及雇主的成本。据David Levine及其共同作者披露，美国职业安全和健康管理局是美国的一个最具争议性的监管机构之一。支持者认为，OSHA的处罚可以遏止受伤，而检查能以对雇主而言低成本的方式来挽救生命。与此同时，批评者害怕OSHA会在缺乏有意义地改善工作场所安全的情况下破坏工作。

这一辩论一直持续着，其部分原因是因为先前的研究产生了有着广泛分歧的结果。Levine及其同事开展了一个“自然的现场试验”，将409个随机接受员工安全性检查的加利福尼亚的工作场所与409个可以接受检查但却没有被选择检查的类似的工作场所进行比较。与对照相比，那些随机被检查的雇主经历了受伤率9.4%的下降及受伤成本的26%的下降。文章的作者发现，没有证据显示，这些改善是以就业、销售、信用评级或公司生存作为代价的。（生物谷Bioon.com）

doi:10.1126/science.1215191
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Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with No Detectable Job Loss

David I. Levine1, Michael W. Toffel2,*, Matthew S. Johnson3

Controversy surrounds occupational health and safety regulators, with some observers claiming that workplace regulations damage firms’ competitiveness and destroy jobs and others arguing that they make workplaces safer at little cost to employers and employees. We analyzed a natural field experiment to examine how workplace safety inspections affected injury rates and other outcomes. We compared 409 randomly inspected establishments in California with 409 matched-control establishments that were eligible, but not chosen, for inspection. Compared with controls, randomly inspected employers experienced a 9.4% decline in injury rates (95% confidence interval = –0.177 to –0.021) and a 26% reduction in injury cost (95% confidence interval = –0.513 to –0.083). We find no evidence that these improvements came at the expense of employment, sales, credit ratings, or firm survival.