Working in the Shadows: Safety and Health in Forestry Services in Southern Oregon

Occupational accidents in Slovak Military Forests and Estates: incidence, timing, and trends over 10 years

Introduction

Forestry provides a wide range of employment opportunities worldwide and is seen as one of the high-risk industries in terms of occupational accidents.

Objectives

The submitted study analyzed the injury rate in the Military Forests and Estates of the Slovak Republic (62.6 thousand ha) between 2013 and 2022.

Methods

The data analyses included regression and correlation analyses, χ2 tests to analyze the relationships between studied variables, and incidence rates.

Results

During the observed period, employees suffered 26 occupational accidents, of which 19.2% were light, 57.7% were registered, 23.1% were severe, and 0% were fatal. For every 1 million m3 of harvested timber, 7.7 accidents occurred. The incidence rate during the observed period was 672.1/100,000 employees. The highest proportion of accidents was in the age group 51-60  years and in employees with the lowest length of work experience <5  years. Regarding time, the highest proportion of occupational accidents occurred between 8:01 and 10:00  AM (53.8%) and day-wise on Thursdays (46.2%). The highest proportion of accidents occurred among forest workers (65.3%) during pruning and silviculture activities (42.3%). The most common injury site was forest stands (65.3%). Superficial injuries (34.6%) were the most common, mainly affecting the lower limbs (50%). The most frequent material agents causing the accidents were work and transport areas as sources of worker fall (38.5%), and the most frequent reason for an accident to occur was the lack of personal requirements for proper work performance (92.4%), whereas only (3.8%) of accidents occurred due to the use of forbidden or hazardous working procedures.

Conclusion

The presented study identified the most vulnerable worker groups and provided an overview of the overall injury rate at the state forest company in Slovakia. The documentation can be incorporated into the safety strategies of forest enterprises.

A Structural Competency Framework for Emergency Medicine Research: Results from a Scoping Review and Consensus Conference

INTRODUCTION

The application of structural competency and structural vulnerability to emergency medicine (EM) research has not been previously described despite EM researchers routinely engaging structurally vulnerable populations. The purpose of this study was to conduct a scoping review and consensus-building process to develop a structurally competent research approach and operational framework relevant to EM research.

METHODS

We conducted a scoping review focused on structural competency and structural vulnerability. Results of the review informed the development of a structural competency research framework that was presented throughout a multi-step consensus process culminating in the 2021 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference. Feedback to the framework was incorporated throughout the conference.

RESULTS

The scoping review produced 291 articles with 123 articles relevant to EM research. All 123 articles underwent full-text review and data extraction following a standardized data extraction form. Most of the articles acknowledged or described structures that lead to inequities with a variety of methodological approaches used to operationalize structural competency and/or structural vulnerability. The framework developed aligned with components of the research process, drawing upon methodologies from studies included in the scoping review.

CONCLUSION

The framework developed provides a starting point for EM researchers seeking to understand, acknowledge, and incorporate structural competency into EM research. By incorporating components of the framework, researchers may enhance their ability to address social, historical, political, and economic forces that lead to health inequities, reframing drivers of inequities away from individual factors and focusing on structural factors.

System Failure: Work Organization and Injury Outcomes among Latino Forest Workers

OBJECTIVES

Forestry services is a hazardous industry with high job-related injury, illness, and fatality rates. The Northwest workforce is largely Spanish-speaking, Latino, and immigrant, working in poor conditions with insufficient attention paid to safety and health. Institutional racism fundamentally shapes the structural vulnerability of Latino immigrant workers. Given this context, we sought to understand how workplace organizational factors and safety climate affect job-related injuries in this industry.

METHODS

We developed 23 case studies from personal interviews after selecting from an initial participant survey pool of 99 Latino forest workers in southern Oregon who had been injured at work in the previous 2 years. Workers were recruited through snowball sampling and door-to-door canvassing. Questions spanned work conditions, tasks, employer safety practices, injury experience, medical treatment, and workers' compensation benefits.

RESULTS

Workers reported broken bones, chainsaw lacerations, back pain, heat and pesticide illnesses, and other occupational injuries. One-third of the cases fell into a Systems Functional category in which they reported their injuries to their supervisors and received medical treatment and workers' compensation benefits. The remaining two-thirds experienced System Failures with difficulties in receiving medical treatment and/or workers' compensation benefits, employer direction to not report, being fired, or seeking alternative home remedies.

CONCLUSION

Workers employed by companies with more indicators of safety climate were more likely to obtain adequate treatment for their injuries and fully recover. Workers for whom interpretation at medical exams was provided by someone unaffiliated with their employers also reported better treatment and recovery outcomes.

[Labor conditions, risk and health of forestry workers in Misiones, Corrientes and Entre Ríos (Argentina), 2010-2014]

In the last decades in Argentina, forestry activity has seen an important expansion, promoted by the State through incentives encouraging the implantation of forest species. This article examines the working conditions of a number of forestry workers in the three main timber producing provinces of Argentina (Corrientes, Misiones and Entre Ríos). Using data from the Survey on Employment, Social Protection and Labor Conditions of Salaried Agricultural Workers, information on forest workers of the aforementioned provinces was processed and analyzed (n=113). In addition, in-depth interviews with workers (n=30) and forest contractors (n=8), carried out from 2010-2014, contributed to the explanation of the studied phenomenon as a whole. The results show that more than 50% of workers consider themselves exposed to unfavorable conditions in the physical working environment, with 16% having had a work accident in the last year. The high precariousness of this type of employment, in conjunction with the forms of contracting (outsourcing), makes it difficult to identify actions to be taken to reverse the processes analyzed.