Organize and survive: unions and health and safety ‐ a case study of an engineering unionized workforce
| Published date | 01 April 1996 |
| Pages | 5-88 |
| Date | 01 April 1996 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425459610116122 |
| Author | Peter Fairbrother |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
The question of
health and
safety at work
5
Organize and survive: unions
and health and safety – a case
study of an engineering
unionized workforce
Peter Fairbrother
Affiliation not known
1. The question of health and safety at
work
Health and safety is an integral feature of work and employment relations. The
consequences of ill-health and danger have an untold impact on workers, on
their personal life, on those who enter employment settings, and on the
provision of services and goods. In a variety of ways, people deal with these
consequences, suffer injury or ill-health, care for the victims, take up claims on
behalf of the injured, testify to dangers and worries at work, campaign for
changes in legislation, and attempt to establish minimum standards of danger
and hazard.
Health and safety at work is also expensive. There are personal and social
costs arising from the debilitating demands of stressful work situations, the
dangers that are part of work, and the burden of deteriorating health. For
employers, there are financial costs as a result of hazards and ill-health
associated with work. To meet standards, to maintain a reasonably able
workforce, employers make a balance between the costs and benefits (both
financial and social) of addressing the problems of health and safety at work.
For the state, health and safety at work is a major question, in the form of health
care, the enforcement of standards, the effects on productivity and the provision
of services. What happens and what can be done raises moral and political
questions about who is responsible for these conditions and provisions and in
Employee Relations, Vol. 18 No.2,
1996, pp. 5-88. © MCBUniversity
Press, 0142-5455
I would like to thank the factory employees who supported the research over a 15-year period. I
would also like to thank the following people, for reading and commenting on drafts of the
monograph: John Bennett, Bob Carter, Jud Cornell, Peter Gutkind, Jim Marshall, Theo Nichols,
Gavin Poynter, Al Rainnie, Jeremy Waddington and Arne Wangel. In addition, Richard Lampard
gave me invaluable technical advice about the presentation of quantitative data. John Berridge
provided extremely helpful editorial advice. Finally, I would like to offer special thanks to Peter
Caldwell who has worked with me on this project from the beginning, assisting in data collection,
discussing my interpretations of the material, and reading successive drafts. The research was
funded by a Nuffield Foundation Small Grants award, a University of Warwick Research and
Innovation Fund award, and an Economic and Social Research Council award (No. R000232006).
Employee
Relations
18,2
6
what way. In all, this is a contested and often fraught area of social and political
concern.
Historically, health and safety at work in the UK has been the focus of
philanthropists, of policy makers, of employers and, of course, workers. Many
have campaigned over health and safety at work, making it the subject of
sometimes bitter contestation. The outcome has been a long history of
legislation dealing with different aspects of health and safety at work, much of
it dating back to the nineteenth century. In recent decades, there have been some
notable advances in the establishment of minimum conditions for more healthy
and safer workplaces, particularly in mining and manufacturing. Nonetheless,
the occasional disasters, involving sea transport, chemical production, or
nuclear energy, are simply the more visible reminders that health and safety at
work is a continuing and pressing problem.
What is equally important is the part played by trade unionism in addressing
the question of health and safety at work. It was through the union form of
collective organization, particularly in the nineteenth century, that many
workers began to seek relief from danger and work-related ill-health. It was out
of these concerns that many in the labour movement, unions and their
parliamentary counterparts, campaigned for legislation to deal with the ill-
health and danger at the workplace, as well as for the welfare provisions that
have been elaborated in many societies during this century. This was part of a
process whereby employers were forced to address some of the more blatant
assaults on workers and their communities.
While much has been written about the broader questions of social policy
and concern, pointing to the contradictions and uncertainties of these policies,
as well as their successes, very little has been written about the on-going
struggles in the workplace (e.g. Marshall, 1965; Offe, 1984; Pixley, 1993). In
particular, scant attention has been given to workers at work, and the part
played by social policies in the organization of the social relations of production
(an exception being Nichols and Armstrong, 1973). In part, this is because of the
seeming intractability of these questions where a concern with health and
safety at work is often seen as a secondary or subordinate question. Workers
seem more concerned with pay and related items; industrial relations are
routinized and for practical and pragmatic reasons health and safety at work
often does not appear at the forefront of concern. Yet, on a daily basis it remains
central as workers manage their work lives.
The promise of legal regulation
In Britain, until 1974, there was a long tradition of setting standards and guide-
lines for working conditions in a range of laws, including the Factories Act
1961, the Offices, Shops and Railways Premises Act 1963, the Mines and
Quarries Act 1954. Often this meant unevenness of standards and not all
workers in all workplaces were covered by legislation. In 1970, at the tail-end of
the Labour Government, the Robens enquiry was set up to make
recommendations on health and safety at work. The report is an early and clear
The question of
health and
safety at work
7
statement of the principle that health and safety is an individual responsibility
best achieved through self-regulation (Robens, 1972). With the subsequent
passage of the Health and Safety at Work Act (HASAWA) in 1974 the aim was
that all workers in all industries would be covered by safety legislation for the
first time in Britain. In this respect, HASAWA embodied the principles of self-
regulation, though with some qualifications. It was an enabling Act which did
not set standards but laid down the guidelines for the procedures that have been
followed ever since.
A cluster of legislation and regulations
HASAWA provided a broad framework for the regulation of health and safety
at work, defining workplaces, imposing requirements and the provision of
guidelines for health and safety activity. Broad duties of responsibility were
placed on different social groups, employers (section 2), self-employed (section
3), controllers of premises (section 4), designers, manufacturers, suppliers and
importers (section 6), and workers (section 7). These duties were qualified in
various ways, but notably with the legal formulation that such duties should be
observed “as far as is reasonably practicable”, which opened up the possibility
of debate and disputation about the actual compliance with the general duties.
Provisions were made in HASAWA for issuing Health and Safety Regulations
and Health and Safety Commission (HSC) Approved Codes of Practice. The idea
was that eventually most of the previous legislation would be repealed and
replaced by regulations and codes of practice. This has taken time and is
subject to the operation and resourcing of the Health and Safety Executive
(HSE), which was charged with the responsibility for producing these
standards of conduct. But, since the passage of this legislation, the HSE has
found itself operating in a changed context, where the deregulation of labour
has prevailed and the resourcing for the HSE’s work has been increasingly
restrictive. Nonetheless, in a hesitant way, a series of regulations and codes of
practice have been produced, with implications for the conduct of health and
safety at work. More recently, the European Union has provided the impetus for
much British legislation on health and safety, particularly since 1990[1].
The legislation was shortly followed by the Safety Representatives and
Safety Committee Regulations (SRSC) of 1978. In these regulations, workplace
union representatives on health and safety were formally recognized as one
partner in the process of self-regulation. While these regulations provided an
opportunity for unions to exploit the possibilities heralded by the legislation
and accompanying regulatory requirements, initially unions responded both
tentatively and hesitantly. Some unions were very much at the forefront in
pressing for this legislation, but the majority of unions were ill-prepared for the
changes indicated by HASAWA. To an important extent, the delay in producing
the regulations relating to safety representatives gave unions time to develop
national policies as well as to organize so as to take advantage of the legislation.
The main issue nationally centred on whether or not the safety representatives
would be in a position to fulfil their statutory duties and to utilize the
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