The vast majority of workers in developed countries take for
granted that going to work on a daily basis is an activity that does
not compromise their physical safety. The data, however, may tell
a different story. For example, although there has been a decline in
the annual number of occupational fatalities in the United States,
there are still more than 6,000 fatal work injuries per year, with
approximately 3.6 million disabling injuries (Conway & Svenson,
1998). The costs in human suffering alone should be sufficient to
engage researchers in this issue, but there are other severe economic
and social costs. In terms of productivity, the number of
days of work lost because of occupational injuries in Canada
between 1993 and 1996 exceeded the number of workdays lost
because of labor unrest (Barling & Zacharatos, 2000). Estimates
from the European Union suggest that an average of 30 days of