07:31 am, Monday 30 March, 2009

Earlier this month, the Australian Safety And Compensation Council released its annual Compendium of Workers’ Compensation Statistics for 2006-07.

The report provides a detailed analysis of compensated work-related injury and disease among Australian employees.

This is the sixteenth report released as part of the Compendium series.

Preliminary data showed that in 2006-07, there were 236 compensated fatalities, which equates to 2.5 fatalities per 100,000 employees.

While the number of fatalities has decreased by 21% over the period from 2000-01 to 2005-06, there was little change in the number of fatalities in 2004-05 (255 fatalities) and 2005-06 (254 fatalities) demonstrating a decline in the rate of improvement.

The Construction Industry recorded the highest number of fatalities at 50, followed by the Transportand storage industry with 45 fatalities, then manufacturing with 36 and property and business services with 15.

The data also revealed there were 132,055 serious workers’ compensation claims in Australia in 2006-07, which equates to 14 serious workers’ compensation claims per 1000 employees.

Over the period 2000-01 to 2005-06, the number of serious claims decreased 6% from 144,740 claims to 136,575.

The most common injuries resulting in serious claims were:

• Sprains and strains of joints and adjacent muscles – 41.1% of all serious claims;

• Fractures – 8.4% of all serious claims;

• Open wounds (not involving traumatic amputation) – 8.4% of all serious claims; and

• Disorders of muscle, tendons and other soft tissues – 7.1% of all serious claims.

Other key findings include that men accounted for 68 per cent of all serious workers’ compensation claims with incidence rates almost twice that of women.

The results demonstrate the need for better Procedures And Policies to be implemented in the approach to current regulatory efforts to improve safety performance. “Even one work-related death is one too many,” said Bill Scales, Australian Safety and Compensation Council chairman.

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