Employees’ Skills Composition and Industrial Accidents in Iran

Industrialization in Iran like many of developing countries has brought numerous advantages and disadvantages. However in best condition, it is not possible to eliminate disadvantages but it is possible to minimize them. Industrial accidents are fundamental disadvantages of industrialization without developing its specific culture. And new researches show that number of these accidents in Iran are much more than global standards. This can be caused by the lack of necessary skills of human resources in industry sector. With such an approach, this study has tried to investigate the impact of skills composition of human resources on industrial accidents in Iranian manufacturing industries. The study has coverd all provinces of Iran. The skills combination was measured by 4 criteria; simple workers, skilled workers, technicians and engineers. And that was evaluated in association with proportion of industrial employees to work-related industrial accidents by using panel data econometrics approach. Unexpectedly, the results of this investigation showed that by increasing the proportion of skilled workers in industrial employees, the rate of work-related accidents has increased whereas as expectated by increasing the proportion of technicians and engineers in industrial employees, rate of work-related accidents has decreased. This indicates the inconsistency between definition of proficiency/skill in industry sector and necessary skills for prevention of work-related accidents. In term of policy making, this finding calls for more attention to skills concerning accident prevention. Iran Technical and Vocational Training Organization is in charge of it.