The Impact of Economic Fluctuations on the Rate of Workers' Complaints of Occupational Accidents

Empirical evidence in many countries implies that fewer occupational accidents are reported during recessions that could be due to a change in workers' reporting behavior which is due to fears of being fired and unemployed, or a change in working safety conditions or a reduction in working hours. Therefore, the study aimed to investigate the effect of economic fluctuations (economic boom & recession) on the rate of workers' complaints (workers' reporting behavior) of occupational accidents and identify the reasons for it.

In the present study, the hypothesis on Boone & van Ours (2006) model, for 31 provinces of Iran in the period 2014 to 2018 using the Panel data method and Random Effects model and analytical- descriptive form was tested. All required statistics and information have been collected from library resources and statistical yearbooks of the Statistics Center of Iran, the Ministry of Cooperatives Labor and Social Welfare, and the Legal Medicine Organization.

The findings of this study indicate that there is a significant negative relationship (-0.256 coefficient) between the unemployment rate (proxy to economic fluctuations) and non-fatal occupational accident rates that the amount of which depends on workers' behavior and decisions. But there is no significant relationship between the unemployment rate and fatal occupational accidents which are not affected by workers' reporting behavior. Estimates also show that factors such as changes in the level of unemployment, changes in the level of employment, increasing employment rates of young people, and increasing working hours of workers do not have a significant effect on occupational accident rates and only increase the share of employees in the industry have a significant effect on occupational accident rates.

In this study, the hypothesis that occupational accident rates have a significant relationship with economic fluctuations and in recession, workers decide to complain fewer to the judiciary, is not rejected.