Occupational safety's impact on Maine's boat yards: what regulatory strategies will most effectively eliminate hazards?.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20004867

Maine's boat yards are recognized by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as a high hazard industry, given the many potential threats their employees face on a daily basis. These boat yards are subject to enhanced scrutiny by OSHA, whose inspections seek to enforce their regulations and promote a safe work environment. Maine's boat yards struggle with OSHA's regulations because their command-and-control measures leave little room for interpretation and, as evidenced by the yard's high workers compensation costs and injury rates, they do not effectively protect their workers. The central question raised by this study is whether a change in OSHA's punitive regulatory strategy can influence the internal self-regulation of boat yards in order to decrease hazards and make them safer for their employees.