FACTS

There are a diverse range of potential safety hazards that restaurant employees can encounter on a daily basis.

1. Slips, trips, and falls on slippery floors
2. Back and arm strain from lifting heavy trays and boxes
3. Burns from hot serving ware and cooking equipment
4. Cuts during food preparation
5. Injuries from workplace violence
6. Back and leg strain from standing for extended periods of time
7. Skin or eye irritation from spilled chemicals

STATS

• 24% of food workers have been injured at their current job, and 17% of workers were injured in their first year.
• 42% of workers rarely or never receive coaching from their manager or supervisor, and 20% said they received too little training before starting their job.
• 37% of workers and 43% of supervisors agree that training is sometimes too complicated or difficult to understand.
• 75% of employees say that feeling personally safe and secure in the workplace is important to them. 72% also say they’re largely unaware of their company’s EHS function.
• The number of foodservice and bar employees killed on the job jumped by 40% in 2015, one of the sharpest increases among all professions, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• The increase was particularly dramatic for kitchen workers and servers, with a rise of 64%, the absolute highest among all the trades that were gauged.
• BLS found in its annual census of workplace fatalities that 165 foodservice and bar employees were killed while working in 2016, compared with 118 the year earlier.
• The leading cause of deaths for kitchen workers and servers was homicide, which took the lives of 21 staffers. Nineteen of the murders were committed with a firearm, according to the statistics.