According to the new study, “while the rate at which people are murdered on the job has gone down, the number of assaults has been trending higher.” The majority of workplace homicides, 75 percent, occurred during a robbery. The researchers also mention that “most assaults, 50 percent, involved kicking, hitting or beating.” When I think of assault I only really imagine kicking, hitting or beating not pinching, pushing or pulling. But I suppose there are minor and major types of assault. There was a large drop in workplace homicides in the private sector, 14 percent, between 2003 and 2004 compared to a 4 percent decrease in the national homicide rate. Also there was good news for the notoriously unsafe job of driving a taxi with “a five-fold decline in homicide rates among taxi drivers between 1992 and 2002.”
Over 80 percent of victims of workplace homicides were male and the “largest number of homicide victims fell in the 36-to-44 years category.” The report also “found that most workplace assaults, 60 percent, are concentrated in health services, social assistance, and personal care occupations.”
Working directly with customers or patients and also making cash transactions will always put the worker at risk of being a victim of assault. I can’t envision a scenario whereby people working in those types of jobs will be completely safe unless of course humans stop trying to rob and steal for a living.
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