Assessment rates for most employers in the territory will either drop or remain constant in 2015, the Yukon Workers’ Compensation Health and Safety Board announced Thursday.

This is the sixth year in a row rates have been lowered for most Yukon employers.

More than 2,050 employers in construction, the resources and transportation “medium” rate group, and the services “low” rate group will see assessment rates fall next year by up to four per cent.

About 1,000 employers in the services “medium” group – whose industries include retail sales, restaurants, and property management, among others – will see their rates stay the same.

Meanwhile, rates will rise by up to 7.5 per cent in 2015 for more than 500 employers in three industry groups.

“We want every Yukon worker to return home healthy at the end of the day,” Joy Waters, the board’s president and CEO, told a news conference yesterday.

“Our strategic mandate is to prevent disability. Many industries in the territory understand this. When we see fewer workplace injuries and time loss claims, businesses see lower assessment rates.”

Assessment rates indicate the amount of money employers in the territory’s four sectors – resources and transportation, construction, services, and government – contribute to the board to cover the cost of compensation for injured workers.

Sectors are divided into rate groups depending on claim costs: low, medium and high.

“Each group’s assessment rate is established after a careful study of the cost of compensating injured workers within its industries, along with other considerations,” according to the board.

Because of its success managing employee safety, one industry – personal care and healthcare facilities, which includes the Yukon Hospital Corp. – has been moved from the services “high” rate group to “medium,” reducing its assessment rate.

“There’s no doubt that the number of claims, the severity of claims and the cost of claims are coming down,” Waters said.

“Overall, it is a good news story. But when you start to look at the different industry areas, there are areas that could be doing better, there’s no doubt. So it’s our job to work with them to improve.”

These industries are responsible for a disproportionate amount of claims costs, she said.

“So rates will not drop universally. In addition to the trauma that deaths and injuries bring to families, friends and society, these injuries are also costly.”

The resources and transportation “low” rate group, which includes farming, trapping and fishing, metal mining, and adventure tourism, will see rates go up 2.9 per cent, to $3.51 per $100 of payroll, up from $3.41.

The sector’s “high” rate group, encompassing diamond drilling, drilling gas or oil wells, forestry, and long-haul trucking, will see rates increase by two per cent, to $8.33 next year from this year’s $8.17.

Rates for the services “high” group – security services, animal control and vehicles sales – will climb 7.5 per cent next year to $3.02 from $2.81.

And the government sector, which includes municipal and territorial levels as well as First Nations, will see an increase of 4.1 per cent, to $1.52 from $1.46.

“This does not directly stem from injuries or claims costs, but reflects the cost of providing presumptive coverage to full-time, part-time and volunteer firefighters,” Waters said of the latter group.

The 2015 assessment rates take into account last year’s workplace accidents and deaths. Three people died in the workplace in 2013.

So far this year, there have been five workplace fatalities: two truck drivers involved in accidents or collisions, an employee at Home Hardware in Whitehorse, a wrangler rounding up feral horses, and one man who died from an occupational disease.

These will be accounted for in the assessment rates for 2016.

Vicki Hancock, alternate chair of the board of directors, said this year’s fatality numbers are “shockingly high.

“The damage that brings to families and the community at large is immense,” she said.

The board will be starting targeted inspections in identified high-risk industries with the goal of improving track records.

Kurt Dieckmann, the board’s director of corporate services, said it also funds a local organization, Northern Safety Network Yukon, that helps companies develop safer programs in the workplace.