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As the title - Safety or Profit? - suggests, health and safety at work needs to be understood in the context of the wider political economy. This book brings together contributions informed by this view from internationally recognized scholars. It reviews the governance of health and safety at work, with special reference to Australia, Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Three main aspects are discussed. The restructuring of the labor market: this is considered with respect to precarious work and to gender issues and their implications for the health and safety of workers. The neoliberal agenda: this is examined with respect to the diminished power of organized labor, decriminalization, and new governance theory, including an examination of how well the health-and-safety-at-work regimes put in place in many industrial societies about forty years ago have fared and how distinctive the recent emphasis on self-regulation in several countries really is. The role of evidence: there is a dearth of evidence-based policy. The book examines how policy on health and safety at work is formulated at both company and state levels. Cases considered include the scant regard paid to evidence by an official inquiry into future strategy in Canada; the lack of evidence-based policy and the reluctance to observe the precautionary principle with respect to work-related cancer in the United Kingdom; and the failure to learn from past mistakes in the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. --Publisher's description
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Worker representatives were formally recognised as agents in regulating workplace health and safety in most Canadian jurisdictions in the late 1970s. This was one component of the transition to an Internal Responsibility System that included mandated Joint Health and Safety Committees, right to know regulations, and the right to refuse dangerous work. Very little has changed in this regulatory framework in the ensuing three decades. The effectiveness of these regulations in improving health and safety was contentious in the 1970s and continues to be debated. Earlier work by Lewchuk et al. (1996) argued that the labour-management environment of individual workplaces influenced the effectiveness of worker representatives and Joint Health and Safety Committees. In particular, the framework was more effective where labour was organised and where management had accepted a philosophy of co-management of the health and safety function. The Canadian economy has experienced significant reorganisation since the 1970s. Canadian companies in general face more intense competition because of trade deals entered into in the 1980s and 1990s. Exports represent a much larger share of GNP. Union density has fallen and changes in legislation make it more difficult to organise workers. Non-standard employment, self-employment and other forms of less permanent employment have all grown in relative importance. This chapter presents new evidence on how these changes are undermining the effectiveness of the Internal Responsibility System in Canada, with a particular focus on workers in precarious employment relationships. Data is drawn from a recent population survey of non-student workers in Ontario conducted by the authors. -- Publisher's description. Contents: pt. 1. National arrangements for workers' representation: case studies from Europe and Australia. Worker representation on health and safety in the UK -- problems with the preferred model and beyond -- The Australian framework for worker participation in occupational health and safety -- Health and safety committees in France: an empirical analysis -- Characteristics, activities and perceptions of Spanish safety representatives -- An afterword on European Union policy and practice -- pt. 2. Challenges and strategies for worker representation in the modern world of work -- Precarious employment and the internal responsibility system: some Canadian experiences -- Employee 'voice' and working environment in the new member states: translating policy into practice in the Baltic States -- Health and safety representation in small firms: a Swedish success that is threatened by political and labour market changes -- Trade union strategies to support representation on health and safety in Australia and the UK: integration or isolation? -- Worker representation and health and safety: reflections on the past, present and future. Includes bibliographical references and index.
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