OBJECTIVES: To understand the health- and safety-related experiences of specific occupations among non-union casino hotel employees to identify processes leading to worker health and safety risks.
METHODS: Using purposive, criterion sampling, 61 workers participated in 13 recorded focus groups (FGs). A semi-structured topic guide addressed work-related health and safety impacts, workplace hazards, and management responses, among others. FG transcripts were analyzed following grounded theory methodology. Demographic and occupational health information was collected via survey.
RESULTS: Codes (97) were collapsed into seven themes: activities/exposures negatively affecting health/safety; barriers to health/safety; injury/pain occurrences; coping mechanisms; job vulnerability; management policies/enforcement; lack of management concern for employees. From these themes emerged the Dynamic Theoretical Framework of Employee Health and Safety Risk.
CONCLUSIONS: "Management's lack of concern" creates a negative environment whereby employer-controlled factors jeopardize employees' health and safety. Interventions targeting management's lack of concern for employee health and safety could favorably change work-based risks.
Latino workers; dynamic theoretical Framework of Employee Health and Safety Risk; focus group study design; non-union casino worker health and safety; occupational health