Employee representation and health and safety. A strategy for improving health and safety performance in small enterprises?
| Published date | 01 April 1998 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425459810211331 |
| Date | 01 April 1998 |
| Pages | 180-195 |
| Author | David Walters |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Employee
Relations
20,2
180
Employee representation and
health and safety
A strategy for improving health and
safety performance in small enterprises?
David Walters
South Bank University, London, UK
Introduction
In a previous linked article the author described a trade union initiative to
improve the health and safety performance of small enterprises in the
agricultural sector through the introduction of a scheme for employee
participation based on the appointment of a number of regional safety
representatives (Walters, 1998). The article concluded that the scheme had
achieved only limited success. The fundamental obstacles to its implementation
were the hostile attitudes of the employers’ organisation and the embedded
insularity and anti-collectivist culture of farmers. However, it was pointed out
that these features of farming were not necessarily typical of employment in
small enterprises in general. It was argued that although the initiative was
unlikely to succeed in agriculture as long as present attitudes and constraints
remained in place, it nevertheless possessed strong potential for success if it
were applied in other sectors of employment where employers were likely to be
more co-operative.
In its review of the supports and constraints that acted upon the scheme, the
article also drew on the experience of the more developed system for regional
trade union representation in small enterprises in Sweden. It suggested that
many of its detailed findings in this respect, as well as those on the operation
the scheme itself, would be relevant for the development of strategies on this
form of representation for employees in small enterprises in other sectors of
employment in the UK. These points are taken up and further elaborated in the
present article, which considers the possible role of schemes for regional
representation in health and safety, as one means to improve health and safety
management in small enterprises, and provides an analysis of the factors
necessary to make them effective and support their development.
Aside from the poor record of health and safety management in small
enterprises, the other reason for considering the possible role of employee
representation in the improvement of the health and safety of employees in
these enterprises, arises from the possible consequences of the implementation
Employee Relations,
Vol. 20 No. 2, 1998, pp. 180-195,
© MCBUniversity Press, 0142-5455 This work includes material from a survey which was carried out with the financial support of
the Health and Safety Executive.
Received November 1997
Accepted February 1998
Employee
representation
and health and
safety
181
of the Health and Safety (Consultation of Employees) Regulations 1996. These
Regulations represent an important watershed for the development and
European integration of legislation on employee participation in health and
safety. The test of their significance will lie in how, and to what ends they are
used by employers and trade unions at the workplace level. Their general
limitations have been discussed elsewhere (James and Walters, 1997). The
purpose of the present article is to explore their significance in the context of the
development of forms of regional representation for employees in small
enterprises.
The article begins by reviewing the problem of health and safety in small
enterprises, before considering the role of employee representation in improving
health and safety organisation and the factors that make it effective. Its
significance for small enterprises is explored with reference to the relevance of
the existing legislative provisions and, more importantly, in the light of findings
on the factors that promote or limit the effectiveness of the operation of
employee representatives in small enterprises. These findings are essentially
those reported in the previous article on roving safety representatives in
agriculture (Walters, 1998), and those gleaned from the Swedish experience of
regional representation (Frick, 1996; 1997).
The problem of small enterprises
Work in small enterprises is a significant feature of the economies of all
European countries, where nearly one third of employees work in enterprises
with fewer than ten employees (EUROSTAT, 1992), more than half the
workforce are employed in enterprises with fewer than 100 employees in some
countries and in others there are more than three quarters employed in such
enterprises (Piotet, 1996). In addition, trends in the organisation of employment
have led not only an increase in the numbers of small enterprises, but also a
fragmentation of larger organisations into smaller units of employment, which
bear a greater functional resemblance to small enterprises, than they do to the
large enterprise represented by their parent organisations. This trend has been
manifest in both private and public sector organisations. The degree of
autonomy that devolution of managerial authority has created for these smaller
units has not enhanced health and safety organisation. In the public sector, for
example, where devolution has been accompanied by other pressures such as
public expenditure cuts, massive shedding of staff, performance reviews,
market testing and privatisation (Farnham and Horton, 1996), there are many
documented cases where health and safety management has suffered a reduced
priority (Walters, 1997a).
A variety of classifications have been proposed to describe ownership
market context and employment relations of small enterprises (Keeble and
Kelly, 1986; Rainnie, 1989; Scase, 1995). Research on small enterprises stresses
their diversity of form and function and emphasises the conclusion that they are
not simply mini-versions of large enterprises. Although generally trade union
organisation is weaker in small enterprises than in larger ones, their diversity
means that even this observation is not universally true, as the relatively strong
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