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Resource Library

Published Date: April 01, 2016

The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) runs a voluntary program that provides free and confidential advice to small and medium-sized establishments on approaches to avoiding workplace injuries and illnesses. This effort, known as the On-site Consultation Program (OSC), operates in addition to—but totally separate from—OSHA’s enforcement activities. Nationwide, OSC performs approximately 27,000 consultation visits per year at establishments that collectively employ more than 1.25 million workers.

Published Date: April 01, 2016

There are concerns that Hispanic workers disproportionately under report workplace injuries, perhaps out of fear of reprisal from employers. This type of underreporting would place an especially high burden on Hispanic workers who are employed in riskier industries and occupations and who have among the lowest rates of health insurance.

Published Date: April 01, 2016

Workplace injuries have negative consequences for individuals, families, organizations, and society as a whole. In the paper, the researchers expand upon the job demands-resources (JD-R) model to include family demands and resources, as well as individual resources, and test longitudinally both between- and within-person antecedents of workplace injuries. They use nine waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) and follow the same individuals over a 12-year period.

Published Date: March 01, 2016
Resource Type: Survey

The report examines expansions to the unemployment compensation system that followed the onset of the Great Recession. Before the recession, eligible workers losing a job could collect up to 26 weeks of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits in most states. Near the end of 2009, up to 99 weeks were available in high-unemployment states through the UI program, the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act of 2008 (EUC08) program, and the Extended Benefits (EB) program. The researchers' main analysis used administrative and survey data on 2,122 recipients in 12 states.

Published Date: March 01, 2016

The recession that began in late 2007 posed major challenges for the U.S. labor market, including a high unemployment rate and a steep increase in unemployment durations. The federal policy response to the recession and the lingering weak labor market included substantial changes to the unemployment compensation (UC) system, which is administered as a partnership between states and the federal government. Twelve pieces of federal legislation affected the UC system from June 2008 to January 2013, the most comprehensive of which was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

Published Date: March 01, 2016

Stagnant wages, growing inequality, and the deterioration of job quality are among the most important challenges facing the U.S. economy today. Although domestic outsourcing – firms’ use of contractors, franchises, and independent contractors – is a potentially important mechanism through which companies reduce compensation and shift economic risk to workers, surprisingly little is known about the extent of this practice and its implications for wages and working conditions.

Published Date: March 01, 2016

The structure and organization of work are continually changing. Changes may be cyclical, reflecting economic and social conditions, including business cycles and labor market structures. Other changes, often resulting from new technologies, may be unidirectional. Whether or not the changes are temporary or permanent, employment arrangements affect worker exposures to workplace hazards and their ability to address them.

Published Date: March 01, 2016

The literature review reviews what is known about sector-based training strategies to date, and why they have become so popular with policymakers. It also reviews several major challenges to expanding them while trying to maintain their quality. These challenges include the fact that only workers with strong basic skills and employability are likely to benefit from these strategies; the likely tradeoffs between short- and long-term impacts and between general and more specific training; the difficulties of replicating and scaling the best models; and uncertain future labor demand.

Published Date: March 01, 2016

The employer-based system of providing retirement and health benefits is failing too many Americans, including disproportionate numbers of the poorer and more vulnerable members of society. The largely incremental changes made over the last 30 years have not solved the basic problems of access, coverage and adequacy. Accordingly, the researcher who developed the literature review suggests that it is time for a more radical approach. One approach would be to redefine the terms “employer” and “employee” to capture the realities of the 21st century workplace.