Relationship between Injury Occurrence and Workplace Organization in Small-sized Manufacturing Factories

Abstract

Objective: This study evaluated the relationship between injury occurrence and workplace organization in small-sized, manufacturing factories in Korea. Methods: Using data from the 2004 Occupational Safety and Health Survey in Korea, this study compared workplace organizational factors (general characteristics, employee characteristics and health and safety characteristics) with injury occurrence of 1,866 small-sized, manufacturing factories (65,921 population factories after weighting). General characteristics of factories comprised location, type and classification of industry. Employee characteristics comprised proportion of manual workers and female workers, average working hours per week and shiftwork. Health and safety characteristics comprised type of safety and health manager, committee for occupational safety and health, labor union, health and safety regulation, monthly health and safety training time, score of health and safety activity and score of safety culture. Results: The following characteristics of injury-occurrence in small-sized, manufacturing factories were determined by multivariate analysis. In terms of general characteristics, the risk of injury-occurrence was higher in Jeolla area than Gyeongin area in outside associate than other enterprises and in coke, refined petroleum products and nuclear fuel, wood and products of wood, food products and beverages and fabricated metal products, except machinery and furniture industries than television and communication equipment and apparatus industries. In terms of employee characteristics, injury-occurrence significantly increased in factories with greater proportion of manual worker and with a higher rate of working hours per week. But significantly decreased in factories with a higher proportion of female workers. In terms of health and safety characteristics, injury-occurrence significantly increased in factories with a self-appointed safety manager, with unorganized union, with a more active committee for occupational safety and health, with unimplemented health and safety regulations, with longer monthly safety and health training time, and with a lower score of safety culture. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that several factors of workplace organization were significantly related with injury-occurrence in factories. These findings are supposed to raise the need for making efforts in workplace organization to improve injury prevention.