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Differences Between Spanish and Foreign Workers in the Duration of Workplace Accident Leave: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis

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Disadvantaged Workers

Part of the book series: AIEL Series in Labour Economics ((AIEL))

Abstract

The main goal of the current work is to analyse differences between the working conditions of national and foreign workers in Spain. For this purpose, we study an important dimension of those working conditions, namely workplace injuries, and more specifically the differences in duration of occupational injury leave as a consequence of work-related accidents. The empirical analysis is carried out using stochastic frontier techniques. This allows a minimum period off work due to merely physiological or medical reasons to be distinguished from an additional period linked to worker behaviour. This latter component measures inefficiency in frontier literature, and is identified in the present work as a relevant indicator of working conditions. The findings reveal that most of the differences observed between national and immigrant workers in the already mentioned duration are a result of the inefficiency term. For the purpose of the current work, this is reflected in poorer working conditions for immigrant workers, particularly for those from less advanced countries.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Certain studies have been conducted into whether, for instance, immigrant workers enter the labour market with worse contracts (for instance with temporary rather than open-ended contracts).

  2. 2.

    Here, the topic explored is whether foreign workers are dismissed more readily than their national counterparts.

  3. 3.

    In this sense, the literature concerning workplace accident frequency, which is closely related to workplace accident duration research, has proved that those workers who have an open-ended labour contract tend to report accidents at work more frequently than their fixed-term counterparts. Two examples of that for Spanish data are Jimeno and Toharia (1996) and Guadalupe (2003). This result is interpreted as a proof of a higher level of claims-reporting moral hazard in workplace accident insurance among permanent workers than among temporary employees. What we consider here is that, for the same reasons, we could expect a higher level of duration moral hazard for permanent workers as well.

  4. 4.

    Such behaviour has often been reported in the literature addressing work absenteeism and in the literature exploring issues of moral hazard linked to work accident insurance.

  5. 5.

    Within the methodological framework of the present work, this lower frontier is linked to what is termed the cost frontier in the literature.

  6. 6.

    Not being able to estimate the value of the variances separately prevents from carrying out the necessary tests so as to validate the existence of inefficiency.

  7. 7.

    The incidence rate used concurs with that calculated by the National Work Conditions Observatory, and is obtained as a quotient between accidents multiplied by 100,000 divided by the total number of those working. Applying this definition, the incidence rate among national workers drops from 4,585.3 in 2007 to 3,199 in 2010, and for immigrant workers from 4,286.1 to 2,448.9.

  8. 8.

    Also the square of this variable is included to allow for non-linear effects of ageing.

  9. 9.

    Martin-Roman and Moral (2008) report higher proportion of hard-to-diagnose injuries among Spanish women once medical and physiological factors were accounted for.

  10. 10.

    NACE stands for “Nomenclature of Economic Activities in the European Community”. Although in 2007 data were classified following NACE93 and in 2010 following NACE09, a ten industry grouping has been carried out for each year so as to provide a homogeneous classification.

  11. 11.

    Corrales et al. (2008) report significant differences in the duration of sick leave resulting from work-related accidents in the Spanish regions.

  12. 12.

    The literature has often established the impact of the type of contract on the reported rate of accidents (Hernanz and Toharia 2006; Amuedo-Dorantes 2002; Guadalupe 2003).

  13. 13.

    For a review of the effects of workers’ compensation on the accident rate, see the analysis carried out in Fortin and Lanoie (2000).

  14. 14.

    Moral et al. (2010) find differences in the percentage of hard-to-diagnose accidents reported by national and immigrant workers.

  15. 15.

    The log likelihood tests ratio reveal a cost frontier with a significance level of 1 %. However, when positing a production frontier, this does not prove significant.

  16. 16.

    The CHIBAR2(01) provided by STATA was 2.9e + 04.

  17. 17.

    The results for the truncated-normal distribution are available from the authors upon request.

  18. 18.

    Age was measured in years. However, so as to check the robustness, we also carried out regressions with age measured logarithmically and by squaring the variable, and no significant changes in other covariates’ coefficients were observed.

  19. 19.

    Compensation was measured in Euros. However, we also performed some regressions by taking the logarithm of Euros and no major changes were found. The same conclusion was reached when we took into account the square of the variable (results available upon request).

  20. 20.

    All these results are available from authors upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. The authors would like to thank the regional Government of Castilla y León for their financial support within the framework of the program VA005A10-1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Jurídicas y de la Comunicación, Universidad de Valladolid, Plaza Alto de los Leones, 1, 40005, Segovia, Spain

    Ángel L. Martín-Román & Alfonso Moral

Authors
  1. Ángel L. Martín-Román
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  2. Alfonso Moral
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Correspondence to Ángel L. Martín-Román .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Economics and Economic History, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    Miguel Ángel Malo

  2. Dept. of Economic Studies, University "G. d'Annunzio" of Chieti, Pescara, Italy

    Dario Sciulli

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Martín-Román, Á.L., Moral, A. (2014). Differences Between Spanish and Foreign Workers in the Duration of Workplace Accident Leave: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis. In: Malo, M., Sciulli, D. (eds) Disadvantaged Workers. AIEL Series in Labour Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04376-0_13

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