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In Victoria, Australia employers are fastidious about workplace safety, not so much because they care about worker safety, but because of the massive fines and jail terms facing them from WorkSafe should an employee be injured, or die from a workplace injury.To that end, safety is enforced, and each department has its own Health and Safety Rep (HSR) to act as a conduit between management and the staff in that department.The legislation is such that actions by the rep are protected, and if management gets vindictive, they are still protected by the harrasser facing a magistrate with a fine of up to $86,000, and the company up to $1.3 millA decent HSR spends a bit of their work time doing hazard reports, incident reports and on OHS meetings, as well as liasing with the crew and management.Each department is to have a first aid person as well, with access to a FA kit they keep to standards.

I’m sure others have described this in similar terms, but I blame the unfortunate practice of Supervising By Spreadsheet. In most companies with more than 150 employees, the organization will have around three tiers of management between the Top Boss and the part-time receptionist. They’ll also have a Human Resources capability, which may be outsource except for an HR manager and a couple staff.The 150-employee benchmark (some argue it’s 50 employees, others say 500) is widely recognized as the point in a start-up or small business’ growth when the CEO and senior management ‘detach’ from the rank-and-file staff, and formal hierarchies are put in place so an employee interacts with one supervisor, who may escalate to their manager, and so forth up the chain of command.WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS HAVE TO DO WITH DRACONIAN ATTENDANCE POLICIES AT WORK?Whether you work for a company with 100 employees or 100,000, individual staff aren’t managed as individuals: they are a workforce comprised of departments, in which smaller sets of employees belong to products, functions, units, teams or groups.Your immediate supervisor and the colleagues you work with know you personally; they know which skills you excel at, and the rhythms of how you get your work done.But just one management tier above this, the bureaucracy needs to quantify (measure) the performance, efficiency and expenses for each of the aforementioned groups, product teams and departments. Because these reports ultimately determine how money is spent, whether money is spent efficiently and the profitability or loss incurred by each, employees aren’t measured by intangible, abstract contributions. They are measured by what is measurable, even when those numbers may be meaningless or decisions made by comparing measurements of groups against groups could actually be detrimental and ill-informed.So among the universally recorded metrics for individual employees are attendance, absences, missed shifts and hours worked. The CEO and top leadership may compare spreadsheets showing metrics for two product teams and see one has employees who show up late or miss work more than the other. This might be interpreted as lax management, unmotivated employees or other black-marks against that group.The management tiers beneath know this, and are vigilant in “keeping their numbers in line.” They know where their teams rank compared to others in the company, and will direct ‘front-line supervisors’ — who actually manage people, not spreadsheets — to get employees to arrive on time, deny requests for time off, and perform in ways that will translate positively into numbers on those spreadsheets.IS THERE ANY WAY AROUND THIS CRAZINESS?In most cases: no. A rigid ‘statocratic’ corporate culture usually won’t change until a catastrophic or well-publicized fiasco forces them to adjust policies.For employers enforcing a ‘no-exceptions’ policy that staff must start work exactly at 8AM: if a major snowstorm hits and employees aren’t allowed to stay home or arrive when conditions are less dangerous, it will be a PR disaster and legal liability nightmare if employees driving on unplowed or ice-caked streets end up crashing their cars or (worse) suffering injuries while rushing to get to work on time.An employee whose family is bedridden with a particularly virulent flu may call in and tell a supervisor they are seriously sick with a flu virus that has left everyone in contact with you bedridden. The supervisor may say, ‘Power through it. I need you to be here on time as scheduled. Hurry up.” If you comply, arriving at work somehow for the duration, and within 48 hours the entire floor you work on is stricken with the same flu, management may not change their sick-day standards out of concern for employee well-being… but they probably will once they see that 40 employees became completely useless while sick at work for a week, when the impact could have been limited to just you missing a couple days to recuperate.THE PROACTIVE OPTIONIf you’re looking for a way to change your employer’s risky, unsafe or ethically unsound policies without waiting for them to respond after a significant incident, you do have options for applying internal pressure as well as outside pressure from your state/local agencies that regulate workplace safety, enforce employee protection laws or have authority to notify employers when their policies and practices are unsafe, unlawful, reckless or grounds for penalties, fines and even suspension of licenses or intervention that could prevent the employer from operating until the relevant policies are revised.The agency that oversees most workplace safety and health matters is Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)For general workplace regulation, employee rights, payroll & wage and enforcement of labor law:Your state Department of Labor and EmploymentThe federal U.S. Department of LaborMost states regulate employers by industry or what the company produces. You should know if you’re in a heavily regulated business, like transportation, insurance, healthcare, food preparation & service or fields involved in work like construction. If you search Google for (STATE NAME) + (INDUSTRY/FIELD) + “regulatory agency” or “workplace complaint” you will find links to your state government agencies, usually with a specific page titled “How To File A Complaint” or “Employee Resources”.Good luck — the law and ethics are on your side here. Hopefully your employer is smart enough to see that it’s better for everyone when they make sure their employees are safe, healthy and treated fairly.

The article is based on a Thomson Reuters “expert survey” conducted a few months back. And I have detailed out, in a previous answer of mine, why the survey is not robust or scientific and can, hence, be trashed.And although it (my answer) was written from an Indian perspective, the overall narrative holds for other countries in the list too since the entire survey design and the conclusions drawn are faulty.Thomson Reuters Foundation (a not-for-profit arm of Thomson Reuters). They conducted a poll back in 2011 and asked a bunch of experts on the topic of female rights and treatments a few questions, and published the results. This year’s piece was a follow-up on the same.The poll can be found here: The world’s five most dangerous countries for women 2018The corresponding article: EXCLUSIVE - From managers to maids: India's working women all face sexual abuseA. The PollThe methodology page on the website mentions,We contacted 548 experts focused on women’s issues including aid and development professionals, academics, health workers, policymakers, non-government organisation workers, journalists, and social commentators.All of the experts were asked to list:5 most dangerous countries in the world for women6 compound questions pertaining to 6 different facets - healthcare, discrimination, traditions, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, and traffickingThe first question was given a weightage of 25%, the remaining 6, 75% (or 12.5% each). And here is the first fallacy - the first question is a repeat of the 6 that follow. A country is 5 times more likely to be named there than the other 6 (which ask for only one option), but is only given twice as much weightage. But that’s probably nit-picking.The major problem with the survey design is that it is open-ended. There are 193 countries in the world and picking out one based on personal assessment and perception will never be objective. It is going to be biased against bigger/more popular countries (they are more likely to be named).Furthermore, a subjective analysis like this is prone to recency effect with countries which have been in the news recently having better memory recall. It is also susceptible to being influenced by the kind of media one follows - India is always getting the short-end of the stick in most mainstream Western publications like Huffington Post, BBC etc. Ironically, HuffPo published a opinion piece on this at the same as the first version of the Thomson Reuters poll was out.The examples are many. Why is it that some Australians reacted to the beating and killing of Indian students with the odd retort that “this happens in Mumbai”? Why did NPR cheerily lend its audience to one man’s claim that he saw an Indian get the Nigerian airline bomber on board? Why does Foreign Policy get to call India “evil” without a drop of concern for how it feels to Indian readers or how dangerous words like this were in the past for the colonized nations? Why does New York Times choose to show agonizing restraint when Pakistani terrorists massacre civilians in Mumbai and run screaming headlines naming the arrest of an “Indian” after Madrid? Why does Slumdog Millionaire, one of the most exhilarating movies of our time, depict the majority of Indian characters in it as irredeemably cruel and barbaric (not the nice Indian hero with the British accent though, of course not)? Why did the fictional slur “slumdog” and the image of poverty reportedly figure so often in the Australian attacks? Finally, why does Glenn Beck find the name of a life-giving sacred river similar to the name of a disease?Even the most revered experts would not have a holistic view of all 193 countries across all 6 categories.And all this seems unnecessary considering that you could recreate the same with a set of objective questions with responses rooted in facts and figures. For example, the question on sexual violence,In your view, what is the most dangerous country in the world for women in terms of sexual violence? This includes rape as a weapon of war, domestic rape, rape by a stranger, the lack of access to justice in rape cases, sexual harassment and coercion into sex as a form of corruption.could be deconstructed into data-driven questions around:reported rape cases per capita (where South Africa with 132 cases per 100,000 is at the top, compared to India with 1.8)adjustments based on extent of non-reporting of rape casesPost-assault treatment of sexual assault victimsLawsMarry-your-rapist lawRape shield lawFinally, the weightage for all questions is the same for all types of experts. So someone working in healthcare gets the same weight to their response on question cultural traditions as a academician focused solely on the topic.The poll, with all its shortcomings is still far better than the ensuing article, the first half of which is a classic case of argumentum ad passiones or Appeal to emotion. The first quarter of the article narrates the experiences of a woman and the fear they go through on a daily basis.It is also followed up by quotes from prominent female public figures (like the Vice President of World Bank, South Asia, and the Head of the National Commission for Women), and other singular incidents (Air India).There are precious few facts scattered throughout the thin narrative, and even those are misleading and/or outright incorrect.Quoted fact #1:At least 20 million women - the combined population of New York, London and Paris - have left the workforce of Asia’s third-largest economy since 2005, World Bank data shows, partly due to their poor treatment. Only 27 percent now work.This is taken from a World Bank Paper published in 2017 and is factually correct, but misleading, owing to Fallacies of Omission.If you look at the number for 2004–05 and 2011–12 in the rightmost column, 20 million (148 minus 128) women have indeed dropped out of the workforce. But the report also goes on to mention that,One plausible explanation for the recent drop in FLFP, therefore, is that with the recent expansion of secondary education (due to sustained efforts by the central and state governments), as well as rapidly changing social norms in India, more working age young females (15-24 years) are opting to continue their education rather than join the labor force early.—-Moreover, the FLFP rate for this age group declined by 19.3 percent (from 42 percent to 22.7 percent) by 2011-12, and during this period the decline was more than compensated by a gain of 22.1 percent in educational participation among working age females. Similarly, in urban areas, the CPR increased by 11 percent (from 49.2 to 60.2 percent), despite a decline in the FLFP rate by only 3.8 percent (from 18.3 to 14.5 percent) during 1993-94 to 2011-12. These figures support the argument that the decline in the FLFP rate for females between 15 to 24 years of age was to a large extent (or may be completely) due to an increase in female enrollment in education.So, teenage girls dropped out of workforce to continue their education. That’s a big positive. But the author conveniently ignored it and added “partly due to their poor treatment” without any proof of the same. (try searching the report for treatment, abuse, exploitation, harassment, etc.)Verdict: Technically correct, but intentionally/ignorantly attributed to the wrong causes.Quoted fact #2:Crimes against women in India spiked more than 80 percent between 2007 and 2016, according to government data.Nearly 40,000 rapes were reported in 2016 despite a greater focus on women’s safety after the fatal gang rape of a student in New Delhi in 2012 that sparked nationwide protests and led to tougher laws against sexual abuse.Rekha Sharma, head of the National Commission for Women (NCW), said it was a case of more women reporting crimes rather than a greater incidence of sexual violence.But local media carry daily reports of sex crimes - from girls molested in school, professional women raped by taxi drivers, to teens trafficked and sold to brothels.Despite this being a expert survey, the author chooses to ignore another expert on the topic and presents her own opinion to counter it.“Rapes have increased -> Expert says it is because of greater reporting -> “but what about the news?””A similar article on Firstpost had other experts stating the same plausible reason for the increased number of rape reports in India (i.e. greater reporting, not greater crimes)."More than the increase in crime rate, it is an increase in reporting," Flavia Agnes, women's rights lawyer and co-founder of Majlis, a non-profit that provides legal services to women and children, told IndiaSpend."There are no mechanisms to analyse such events," said Agnes. "I feel that due to media pressure on certain brutally violent incidents, there is greater awareness, and women are coming forward to report crimes."Verdict: Proof by assertion. Likely untrue.Quoted Fact #3:India recorded 539 cases of sexual harassment at the workplace in 2016, up 170 percent from 2006, a joint report by EY and Indian industry body FICCI from last year showed.But campaigners say the figures are just the tip of the iceberg. A 2017 survey by India’s National Bar Association found nearly 70 percent of sexual harassment victims did not report their cases.The facts reported are again correct, but the interpretation is not.Here’s a trend chart of sexual harassment incidents reported at workplaces (from thsi report from EY and based on data released by NCW.)As you can see, the reported cases remained below around 200 till 2012. From 2013, they have been increasing ~50% YoY.The reason for that could be the fact that The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 came into force on 9 December 2013, and granted women more power to report such crimes. Again, conveniently ignored.Verdict: Error of omission.The closing statements cite one incident of female trafficking and assert that “Such cases lend weight to the Thomson Reuters Foundation's poll of 548 experts on women's issues that found India was the most dangerous country for women in terms of human trafficking including sex slavery and domestic servitude.”According to this 2017 report by the US Department of State, India is a Tier-2 country as per the Trafficking Victim Protection Act of 1991, implying that it “does not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards, but is making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with those standards.” Tier 1 countries are the fully-compliant ones.Countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Saudi, Iraq, HK, Kuwait, Nigeria, Oman, Thailand are one level below (Tier 2 watchlist), and Congo, Iran, Russia, Sudan, Syria are Tier 3.All in all, both the poll and the ensuing articles should be taken with a , p̶i̶n̶c̶h̶, nay fistful of salt.