Lost-Time Injury Rates: A Marxist Critique of Workers' Compensation Systems

In Lost-Time Injury Rates Rodrigo Finkelstein examines the information-intensive operations of recording and processing work-related accidents, diseases and fatalities carried out by Workers' Compensation Systems. Situated within the field of political economy of information, this critique contributes to the understanding of how injury rates service a specific sector of the economy by constructing lost labour power for sale. The central argument of this critique can be stated as follows: grounded in the capitalist mode of production, injury rates constitute a historical social relation that, by taking the semblance of inductive indicators, conceal specific capitalist relations that bring about the exchange and distribution of lost labour power among capitalists and wage labourers.