Is labour Hire safer for companies?

''Labour-hire ‘safer’? Not likely!

The employer group representing labour-hire companies, the Recruitment & Consulting Services Association (RCSA) last week claimed that ‘independent research’, [commissioned by them!] has ‘revealed that the safety performance of the on-hire industry is not – as is often claimed – worse than direct employment, but it is in fact better.’ Based on very limited claims incidence data, the researchers from the Values Bank Research Centre claimed a ’27 per cent lower rate of claims’ but did acknowledge that number of claims does not necessarily equate to number of injuries.

The RCSA criticises the 2002 Underhill report that found that on-hire workers were more likely to be injured, and more severely, than direct employees. The Value Bank researchers said, ‘..a review of the data shows its claims don’t stack up… [it] is outdated because crucial information wasn’t available at the time.’
But Elsa Underhill, senior employment & IR lecturer at Deakin University, said the sample was too small at only 232 workers across Australia. ‘Virtually all research shows [labour-hire workers] are more at risk,’ Underhill said. Her research, which looked at workers compensation claims across the labour-hire industry in Victoria, showed these workers were in an ‘extremely vulnerable position’. ‘They are more likely to be injured earlier in their placement ... [because] they are working in an unfamiliar workplace; they have to do tasks they haven't performed before and often haven't been trained in; and they lack job-specific training,’ Underhill said. ‘Some host companies do train but don't necessarily offer sufficient training in tasks they need to do. If they did, it would be too costly.’ She added that the results of her study were very consistent with overseas findings."
Sources: RCSA Media Release; OHNews More information on Labour Hire