SafetyAtWorkBlog regularly receives excellent review books from the New York publishing company, BaywoodPublishing. The latest is entitled Safety or Profit? – International Studies in Governance, Change and the Work Environment. I have yet to get beyond the introduction to the chapters by Australian academics on precarious workers (Quinlan) and the decriminalisation of OHS (Johnstone) but the introduction is fascinating.
The most fascinating is its discussion of Lord Robens’ Report of the Inquiry into Health and Safety at Work from 1973. The editors, Theo Nichols and David Walters, question the “major advance” many claimed for the Robens report by comparing it reviews 40 years earlier. Nichols and Walters quote the conservatism that led to Robens seeing criminal law as being “largely irrelevant”, and legal sanctions being “counter to our philosophy”. However, they do admit that Robens was prophetic on the growth of self-regulation and the duties of care.
Nichols and Walters also remind us that the Robens-inspired Health and Safety At Work Act of 1974 did not recommend the creation of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) representatives.
That occurred a few years later with the Safety Representative and Safety Committee Regulations of 1977. The editors take this as an example of the enormous influence that the trade union movement exerted in this decade. Given so many OHS laws since then have combined the two issues of OHS and industrial representation, it is important to remember that this was not always so.
Indeed one can argue that what has dated OHS legislation based on these 1970s most is the industrial relations impositions discussed above. Most will acknowledge that the influence of trade unions has declined markedly in most countries since the 1970s yet OHS laws, even newer Work Health and Safety (WHS) laws, continue to be structured round a tripartite model that does not match the industrial, economic or social demographics. How different the OHS laws would have been if they had been based on values and norms rather than economic and political tripartite agreement? We would not be trying to now convince the community of the values and norms (or sell safety) that were originally only a subtext of OHS laws.
Nichols and Walters acknowledge the changed work and economic situation over the last 40 years and ask “how those who work in non-trade union places can best be protected”. This is a question that should be asked constantly, particularly, when the union movement and its perspective was so influential in the establishment of the OHS laws.
They also acknowledge how the research climate has changed. They note that the sources of advice in the 70s were from doctors, lawyers, engineers, ergonomists, occupational hygienists and others. The growth in “critical social scientific research, has changed the focus on OHS into new labour areas, to issues of gender and to newly discovered occupational hazards. But also to the study of “culture”.
Significantly, the editors write that
“This talk about a safety culture is often as superficial as Robens’ own penchant for invoking the importance of “attitudes” or of what an earlier generation referred to as the “human factor”…. and it is often based on a similar lack of evidence for the remedies offered.” (page 6)
This discussion of safety culture is refreshing and the editors are very topical even discussing the neo-liberal attacks on “health and safety madness” in the UK and the almost hysterical hyperbole around red tape.
A last and telling quote from the Introduction is that
“…charges to the effect that “health and Safety madness” or the “burden of red tape” impedes efficiency and profit distract attention from the possibility that profit can impede health and safety. This is not least so, of course, when capital is strong and labor weak, an equation that invites corner cutting.” (page 7)
I have yet to get past the Introduction in this book but cannot wait to Quinlan and Johnstone in particular. The gender perspective in chapter 2 by Katherine Lippel and Karen Messing is promising but gender studies should be gender neutral and I am keen to see if this chapter reflects this. The OHS and corporate aspects of the Deepwater Horizon disaster have been well reported but in one chapter Charles Woolfson argues
“…that today, the legacy of the long era of deregulation in the United States, exported globally in the name of free enterprise and economic efficiency, continues to take its toll in worker lives and the well-being of communities. He suggests that it remains to be seen whether this unpalatable truth will find acceptance by those with the power to reconfigure safety regimes to protect people first and profits second.” (page 13)
Baywood Publishing does not seem to have the prominence of other academic publishers but I love the global pool of talent they can draw on. Chapters from Sweden, Canada and elsewhere provide a local perspective in a global context. I should not have to look overseas or in expensive journals for quality research from my own country but that seems to be the way of the academic publishing world. I cannot wait to get time to read the rest of it.
The Baywood site does not include electronic versions of the book but I believe they are available for around $US43. The ePub ISBN is 978-0-89503-819-7 and ePDF is 978-0-89503-820-3
