Serious occupational accidents of non-Dutch workers in The Netherlands

Serious occupational accidents investigated by Dutch Labour Inspectorate (I-SZW) resulted in 5.2 thousand victims in the years 2007-2009. Of these 15 per cent was a foreign national working in the Netherlands. This paper discusses whether foreign nationals working in the Netherlands run more risk than Dutch nationals to become victim of a serious occupational accident. The discussion is based on the merge of I-SZW accident analysis data with data from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) describing the employed working population. With the application of an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition the differences in composition and frequencies between Dutch and non-Dutch nationals were compared and explained. The results indicate that the accident frequency of non-Dutch employed workers is on average higher than that of Dutch employed workers. Especially in the sectors Manufacturing, Construction, Trade and Transportation the difference is noteworthy.