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BACKGROUND: In 2011 the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began collecting the union status of workers fatally injured on the job by incorporating a new optional variable in the national Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries. This study describes how we implemented collection of this variable in Massachusetts.
METHODS: Union status was defined as whether the victim was a union member at the time of the incident. MA FACE and CFOI staff assessed the presence of definitive union information in existing core source documents for early 2011 deaths. We then queried the Current Population Survey (CPS) to characterize union density by industry and occupation in order to classify victims as probable union or non-union. Next we identified potential other sources of information on union status and developed and tested/modified a check list which allowed us to track which sources provided information for each victim. The checklist includes a flow chart that establishes a general progression in effort, starting the search with the core source documents, browsing more public sources, and then contacting additional partners and others as necessary. These methods were applied to all 2011 deaths and a sample of deaths in 2012.
RESULTS: We were able to confirm union status for 98% of cases, 99 of the 101 fatalities in our sample. Core source documents rarely contained explicit information about union status. Publically available OHSA inspection data was a useful source (29%) as was CPS data on union density (25%). Two-thirds of cases were confirmed using these sources, industry knowledge we gained through this process, or reasonable extra effort in searching public sources. Of the remaining cases, 14% were confirmed with the help of stakeholders. Direct contact with the victim's employer was necessary for 10% of cases.
CONCLUSIONS: We found the union status of most victims can be determined with additional effort. Other states could benefit from looking at their own union profile in the CPS. Also, BLS should request that OSHA incorporate the union information collected in the course of fatality investigations into the OSHA data distributed to CFOI states. Because unionization can mean very different things across industries, it is important to understand what aspects of unionization we expect may have an impact on worker safety. Additional research is needed to understand these factors and would perhaps identify additional indicators of union presence which should be recorded.