Workplace injury and illness numbers in the U.S. may not be what they seem.

News item from the Oct. 26 issue of The Building Tradesman: "The construction industry was a little safer for workers in 2006, according to a report issued Oct. 16 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)." Based on the government numbers, we reported that from 2005 to 2006 the total "recordable case rate" for job injuries in the U.S. declined from 6.3 cases to 5.9 cases per 100 full-time workers in 2006.

End of story? No, says a report by Mike Hall of the AFL-CIO, issued last month. "As workplace safety advocates and academics long have pointed out, these figures have a major flaw - they are compiled from one source - employers," Hall wrote.

He said some studies, including a 2006 report in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, find that the government's tallies of injuries and illnesses on the job could be underreported by as much as 69 percent.

For example, he said "in 2005, BLS reported there were 4.2 million nonfatal injuries and illnesses in private-sector workplaces, but once underreporting is factored in, the figure is closer to 12.6 million incidents."

As the AFL-CIO's 2007 report Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect notes: "Under-reporting of workplace injuries and illnesses is not a new phenomenon. Numerous government-driven and independent studies have documented the problem of under-reporting and made recommendations to correct it, yet little mention ever is made of under-reporting when the BLS statistics are released."

To highlight incidents of under-reporting, a fall protection expert cited by the Construction Labor Report, said one prime hazardous example is that of truck drivers who are required to secure protective tarps on the beds of flatbed vehicles. The expert, J. Nigel Ellis, found six fatal falls from stationary flatbed trucks at a single corporation in 2006 - but the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported only two such fatalities nationwide.

Ellis said the discrepancy is due to the fact that many of the truckers are owner-operators - and owners are supposed to report the fatalities.

Beyond that example - why would employers deliberately under-report workers' injuries and illnesses? As Death on the Job points out, there are several economic reasons, including:

• Workers' compensation systems create incentives for employers to underreport by increasing costs for companies that show an increase in injuries.
• Firms seeking government contracts may fear being denied a contract if their injury rate is high.
• OSHA's reliance on injury rates in targeting inspections and measuring performance creates a clear incentive for employers not to record injuries.

"While the number of hours worked in construction increased by 6 percent from 2005 to 2006, the number of injuries and illnesses for workers was essentially the same. As a result, the total recordable case rate in construction declined from 6.3 cases to 5.9 cases per 100 full-time workers in 2006. The BLS reported that the number of construction injuries and illnesses totaled 412,900 in 2006, down from 414,900 in 2005."