This week’s Cavalcade of Risk, the pre-holiday edition is hosted by our respected friend, Joe Paduda at Managed Care Matters. It’s a smorgasbord of links on a wide variety of risk-related topics, from the sub-prime mortgage mess to health insurance.
And for all you workers comp wonks out there, while visiting Joe’s place, be sure to check out his two-part post on the workers comp bill review industry, part 1 and part 2. These two posts are part of a planned series giving an overview of the industry sector changes roiling about in both software vendors and service providers. Joe has his finger on the pulse.
Our blog post on the new Canadian safety ads is included in this week’s Cavalcade. As a follow-on, our friend Dave at rawblogXport has linked to some media coverage of the ads:
The Ottawa Citizen – The new workplace safety ads are revolting. That’s why they work
The Vancouver Sun – Ontario safety ads go for shock effect
The Vancouver Sun – WorkSafe videos posted on YouTube draw an audience
In other blog news, Peter Rousmaniere of Working Immigrants calls our attention to an important New York Times article on domestic slavery in the U.S. – hard to believe that actual slavery and human trafficking is occurring in the land of the free, but sadly, it is and it is estimated to affect 15,000 to 20,000 workers a year, about a third of those being domestic workers who are kept in involuntary servitude. We’ve discussed modern day slavery previously in relation to Florida’s orange juice industry.
Thanks to the folks at The Pump Handle for alerting us to the NIOSH Science Blog, a blog with a dedicated mission of “translating NIOSH scientific research into practice” and “engaging in robust scientific discussion with the goal of protecting workers.” The most recent post deals with workplace stress, and other recent entries discuss truckdriver safety and firefighter fatalities related to cardiovascular incidents.
Or neighbor to the north, Michael Fitzgibbon of Thoughts from a Management Lawyer, has posted about a recent Canadian study on the prevalance of depression at work, noting that that employers are increasingly having to deal with and accommodate employee absences having their root in mental or psychiatric impairments. That increase does not stop at the border – while we know of no similar study here in the U.S., psychiatric issues are a not-insignificant contributor to disability.
