Difference in employment status, regular or non-regular as factors that threaten industrial safety

Exploratory study from cases of Japan and the US

Abstract

Substantial decrease of industrial injuries in recent years is the result of improvements to both sides of the hardware such as the operational process and environment, and the software such as the practicing a KY activity (Kiken Yochi activity: accident prediction review) and risk assessment taken in from the findings about industrial safety research which was started from a human factor study at the site. Even with such great costs and efforts invested, however, industrial injuries have continued to occur a certain number of times even though they have been reduced, and the fact that these occurrences are concentrating on non-regular employees is disturbing. In this paper, I have considered the factors of industrial injuries to be concentrated on non-regular employees, and the necessary efforts in order to improve their conditions using cases of industrial injuries that occurred in Japanese companies, while basing the study on the factors and structure of industrial injuries to non-regular employees that occurred in succession at oil refining plant of US companies.