After conducting an in-depth analysis of trends in work accidents and enforcement efforts regarding safety from January to December 2021, KLO released its annual report on workplace accidents. This report follows on findings of our mid-year report, published this summer, which revealed many gaps in state efforts to promote safety on work sites and noted a small decrease in fatalities but an increase in accidents. The year-end summary report for 2021 highlighted trends in work accidents across all sectors and compared these results to the prior year. Overall, at year’s end, the number of accidents is quite similar to prior years and due to an increase in fatalities in the second half of the year, the number of those fatally injured at work this year ended up being greater than last year. In the construction sector, the number of accidents decreased by 7% compared to last year, but worker mortality rate increased by 9%.
Report Summary
Work accident database – Kav LaOved monitors work accidents daily based on Magen David Adom reports, which have been made available to the public since mid-2021. KLO utilized Magen David Adom data as the foundation for this annual report. The Magen David Adom database allows us to compare the number of fatal and non-fatal accidents over time, causes of accidents, the number of casualties etc.
It should be noted, however, that there is no database of work accidents that list of accidents sorted by level of injury. A report published by the Knesset Research and Information Center in December 2021 reviews various data sources, including that of the National Insurance Institute, records of emergency medical institutions and more. The report notes the absence of a well-organized database, the lack of data uniformity and more. Obviously, a reliable and well-structured database would allow the state to perform better data analysis and more targeted enforcement, which would increase occupational safety in Israel. One of the first objectives of the authorities should be to collect better data and create a reliable database for occupational safety.
Available safety orders database – Part of our effort to promote transparency in occupational safety is the launch of the Safety Orders Database in this report, which makes public the identity of companies who received the greatest number of safety orders, the number of orders each company has received per year and more. The information is taken from the Ministry of Labor and Welfare website, which discloses such information, following a petition by Kav LaOved which called for this. However, the information on the Ministry’s website is presented in a way that makes it difficult to understand and analyze the data.
Why safety orders? Safety orders are one of the tools available to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (which is under the Ministry ofEconomy) in order to deter contracting companies that do not meet the safety requirements designed to protect workers. Safety orders impose a number of requirements on companies to address gaps in safety. The most important of which is the requirement to immediately address the hazard posing a risk to worker safety.
But safety orders have another purpose: multiple safety orders can help identify companies that repeatedly violate safety requirements and hence routinely compromise the safety of their workers. Thus, if a company receives 3-10 safety orders in the space of 18-24 months, the violation will be handled by the Registrar of Contractors, rather than the Occupational Safety Administration, as the Registrar has the authority to revoke or suspend the company’s license.
As a result, the use of safety orders requires public scrutiny both to monitor employers and to track steps taken by the authorities to sanction and hold accountable problematic employers that are endangering the safety of their workers. This report presents a comprehensive database of safety orders; specifies the date when information became publicly available; lists the employers receiving the highest number of safety orders since 2017 as well as actions taken by the Registrar of Contractors to address their case, and more.
We hope this information will be useful to the general public.
Full report here and below:
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