Browsing by Subject "Workplace safety"
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Item Open Access Essays in Labor Economics: Effects of Immigration Policy on Vulnerable Populations(2020) Grittner, Amanda MelinaThis dissertation studies three questions in labor economics centering around immigration policy and its effects on vulnerable populations. I use administrative data from the United States (U.S.) and Germany to address these questions empirically.
In the first chapter, I investigate the effects of an increase in immigration enforcement through local police force on domestic violence victims’ help-seeking behavior. I use a fixed effects model, a generalized synthetic control method and novel administrative data on the use of services for domestic violence victims in North Carolina. In North Carolina, a large fraction of individuals of Hispanic origin are undocumented immigrants or connected to undocumented immigrants. I find that local immigration enforcement significantly reduces Hispanics’ use of domestic violence services. It does not affect service use by African Americans who are predominantly U.S.-born citizens. This suggests that the decrease in Hispanics' service use is directly related to their immigration status and not driven by a general effect on minorities. I do not find any robust evidence that local immigration enforcement affects intimate partner homicides of Hispanic women.
The second chapter studies the relationship between workforce demographics, workplace hazard, and worker complaints about hazardous or illegal working conditions. In joint work with Matthew Johnson, I examine if worker complaints are effective in directing inspections by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to the most hazardous workplaces. We measure worker complaints and workplace injuries by inspections triggered by a worker complaint and a serious workplace injury, respectively. We find that the complaint rate in a county and industry is positively associated with its recent injury rate. This relationship changes for workplaces with a high share of Hispanic workers. Workplaces that employ larger shares of Hispanic workers have lower complaint rates, but higher injury rates. We use fixed effects regressions to estimate the effect of local immigration enforcement on Hispanic workers' willingness to complain about hazardous conditions. We find that stronger enforcement significantly reduces worker complaints, but not workplace injuries in workplaces with a high share of Hispanic workers. This provides evidence that stronger local immigration enforcement reduces Hispanic workers' willingness to complain about unsafe working conditions irrespective of the true workplace hazard.
In the third chapter, I investigate the effect of integrating refugee students in elementary schools on the academic performance of native students. Using administrative data from Germany, I exploit the variation in the percentage of refugee students within schools to account for endogenous sorting of refugees into schools. I do not find any evidence for negative effects of refugee students' integration on the academic performance of native elementary students. In contrast, exposure to refugee students reduces mandatory grade retention rates of German fourth graders. Effects on the percentage of students who receive a recommendation for the higher secondary track are very small and statistically insignificant. I also show that refugee students attend schools where German students' performance is lower.
Item Open Access Farmworker Perceptions of Work Safety, Work Hours, and Living Conditions(2021-02-10) Doherty, CarolineFarmworkers are integral to the functioning of society in the US. Farmworkers are invisible heroes, and they deserve their voices to be heard, their experiences to be shared, and their perspectives to be intentionally incorporated into policymaking. Migrant farmworkers in North Carolina are guaranteed rights under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the NC Migrant Housing Act. These acts define farmworker work safety conditions, work hours and compensation, and living conditions. This paper investigates farmworker perspectives of these three acts through analyzation of 16 semi-structured interviews done with farmworkers in eastern North Carolina. NVivo was used to analyze the interviews and identify major themes that inform farmworkers’ perspectives of the manifestation of the three acts in their workplace. Lack of knowledge and training of rights was found to be one of the main factors contributing to farmworkers’ perspectives. Fear of grower retaliation was discovered to be a significant deterrent against reporting violations. The lack of an effective, reliable, and accessible violation reporting mechanism that protects the complainant was also found to influence farmworkers’ exertion of their rights. These results imply that farmworkers do not have adequate levels of awareness or understanding of their rights so there is a lack of demand for improved conditions. Increased farmworker training of their rights combined with an effective, reliable, and accessible violation reporting mechanism may help ensure that farmworkers will be able to exercise their rights without fear.Item Open Access Tackling the NFL: An analysis of the role of the government in workplace safety(2014-01-06) Green, MelanieThis research analyzes how the federal government can play a role in solving the concussion crisis in the National Football League (NFL). The government has intervened in private sector industries in the past on the grounds of improving safety and health, most notably through the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. The government has intervened in several issues that affect the sports industry, such as antitrust issues and substance abuse, but has not made any significant impact on concussion legislation. Based on three case studies of other industries, the NFL concussion crisis prompts government intervention. However, because the phenomenon is so recent, football is a unique industry, and the NFL has particularly addressed the situation with internal policy, government intervention has not taken place.