In the last decade, this support has slipped because of layoffs at the largest corporations, a trend toward small workplaces that are costly to organize and anger over disclosures in 1992 that William V. Aramony, the longtime president of United Way of America, was living a lavish lifestyle and embezzling money.
In addition, proportionally fewer small workplaces in a region was associated with lower work injury rates.
A distinctive characteristic of these areas are the high percentage of small workplaces (see Table 2).
We found that census divisions with a greater proportion of small workplaces (defined workplaces with less than 20 employees) had lower youth work injury.
Additional information for each region on the percent of the unionized labour force and the percent of the labour force working in small workplaces (for both 15 – 24 yr olds and 25+ yr olds) were gathered from the SLID [ 52].
The percent of 15 – 24 year olds with high school education (not currently studying), the percent of the population who had lived at the same address for the last five years, the percent of adults with high school education, and both the percent of adults and 15 – 24 year olds working in small workplaces were all negatively associated with the adjusted injury rate.
For example, percent of labour force in small workplaces was correlated with ratio of population aged over 65 yrs to population aged 15 – 64 yrs (r = 0.50), and with percent of population living at the same address for the last 5-years (r = 0.54).
Second, a closer look at the regions that had a greater proportion of small workplaces was that they also tended to be some of the more affluent regions in Ontario (e.g., Muskoka) and tended to have greater residential stability as well.
Because of sample size limitations in low population density regions, we combined two cross sectional SLID files from 1998 and 2002 to estimate the number of workers employed in small workplaces (less than 20 employees), and the number of workers who were members of a union.
The roles of these approaches in promoting the safety and health at work are discussed based on their recent experiences in preventing work-related risks and improving the quality of work life, particularly in small-scale workplaces.
