Trade Unions and the History of Health and Safety in British Mining

2014 ◽  
pp. 157-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave Lyddon
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals Guardians of Workers’ Bodies? Trade Unions and the History of Occupational Health and Safety

2020 ◽  
Vol 119 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Arthur McIvor
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Health ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Occupational Health And Safety ◽  
Recent Experience ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
Sharp Decline ◽  
History Of

Critically assessing the role and influence of trade unions on occupational health and safety (OHS), and tracing their contribution to OHS discourse, is here examined through the lens of history in Britain positioned relative to international experience. The idea of trade union neglect of OHS is challenged through study of the historic role of trade unions and the more recent experience (since the 1970s) of unions’ growing interest in OHS whilst simultaneously experiencing a sharp decline in membership and the adverse impact of this disempowerment on OHS standards. Acknowledging the politics of gender shows British unions neglected occupational health and embodiment issues that impacted upon women as workers. Robust and compelling evidence from the mid-twentieth century - that unions were a powerful countervailing force to workplace dangers, as key sentinels shielding workers’ bodies - is followed by evidence of increasing occupational illnesses in the period of union decline and precarious work from c. 1980. The article urges more critical reflection on trade unions as actors and as a voice in the OHS discourse.

Examining the entry of Walmart into South Africa: A stakeholder management perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-89
Author(s):  
Tembinkosi Bonakele ◽  
Dave Beaty ◽  
Fathima Rasool ◽  
Drikus Kriek
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Stakeholder Management ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Management Perspective ◽  
Labour Standards ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Focus

The recent entry of the US multinational Walmart into South Africa has proved to be a source of controversy. Key stakeholders in South Africa objected to the merger and attempted to block it unless certain conditions were met. The aim of this study was to examine the controversy and the conditions surrounding the merger. The research employed a qualitative archival analysis to examine publicly available sources of information with regard to the merger. The findings revealed key stakeholders’ concerns that Walmart’s entry would lead to an increase in imports which would displace local producers, increase unemployment, marginalise trade unions and lower labour standards unless certain conditions were met. The results also revealed problems relating to the firm’s primary focus on “business” while neglecting “public interest” issues, naively relying on their “local retailer” to manage key stakeholders, and assuming that their perceived controversial reputation regarding treatment of trade unions and their views about unemployment as well as the controversies surrounding their history of entry into other global markets would not have the major negative impact it did on stakeholders in South Africa.

Labor Movements in Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico M. Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Labor Movements ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Labor

The history of Latin America cannot be understood without analyzing the role played by labor movements in organizing formal and informal workers across urban and rural contexts.This chapter analyzes the history of labor movements in Latin America from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. After debating the distinction between “working class” and “popular sectors,” the chapter proposes that labor movements encompass more than trade unions. The history of labor movements is analyzed through the dynamics of globalization, incorporation waves, revolutions, authoritarian breakdowns, and democratization. Taking a relational approach, these macro-dynamics are studied in connection with the main revolutionary and reformist strategic disputes of the Latin American labor movements.

The Mensheviks and NEP Society in Russia

1982 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 347-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Brovkin
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Changes ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
New Period ◽  
History Of

AbstractContemporary scholarship on the development of the Soviet political system in the 1920s has largely bypassed the history of the Menshevik opposition. Those historians who regard NEP as a mere transition to Stalinism have dismissed the Menshevik experience as irrelevant,1 and those who see a democratic potential in the NEP system have focused on the free debates in the Communist party (CP), the free peasantry, the market economy, and the free arts.2 This article aims to revise some aspects of both interpretations. The story of the Mensheviks was not over by 1921. On the contrary, NEP opened a new period in the struggles over independent trade unions and elections to the Soviets; over the plight of workers and the whims of the Red Directors; over the Cheka terror and the Menshevik strategies of coping with Bolshevism. The Menshevik experience sheds new light on the transformation of the political process and the institutional changes in the Soviet regime in the course of NEP. In considering the major facets of the Menshevik opposition under NEP, I shall focus on the election campaign to the Soviets during the transition to NEP, subsequent Bolshevik-Menshevik relations, and the writings in the Menshevik underground samizdat press.

Unequal Opportunities

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 109-129
Author(s):  
Miranda J. Banks
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Committee Report ◽  
Broadcast Television ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
History Of ◽  
Statistical Survey ◽  
Unequal Opportunities

This article examines the precarity of labor for women working in US broadcast television during the long 1970s, focusing on interventions by government agencies, trade unions, and individual writers and producers, with a particular focus on the Writers Guild of America (WGA) 1974 Women's Committee Report, the first major statistical survey to track the representation of women as creatives within American television. This article puts qualitative and quantitative data in direct conversation: where one captures the nuances of personal experience and the other highlights the extent of inequality, together they help fill gaps in understanding the long history of struggles for equity in media production.

scholarly journals Strategizing and Fatalizing: Self and Other in the Trauma Narratives of Justice-Involved Women

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 873-887 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda M. Emerson
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trauma Narratives ◽  
Convenience Sample ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
History Of

Jail admissions in the United States number nearly 1 million women annually. Many have limited access to public support and must seek assistance from family, friends, and strangers to maintain health and safety after release. This study sought to learn more about how women with a history of interpersonal trauma and criminal justice involvement perceive and manage social relationships. In-depth, story-eliciting interviews were conducted over 12 months with 10 participants who were selected from the convenience sample of an ongoing parent study in a Midwestern urban jail. Embedded trauma narratives were analyzed for self-presentation, form, and theme. The trauma narratives registered a continuum of agency, anchored at either end by patterns of strategizing talk and fatalizing talk. Providers and advocates can improve support for justice-involved women post incarceration by becoming familiar with and responding to patterns of strategizing and fatalizing in their personal narratives.

History of the Workers' Museum in Denmark

2009 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Ludvigsen
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
General Council ◽  
Governing Board ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
Prime Location

The Workers' Museum in Copenhagen was formally inaugurated on April 12, 1982, at a meeting held at the historic Workers' Assembly Hall at Rømersgade in Copenhagen, the prime location near the Royal Gardens and Rosenborg Palace where the museum is located. At that time the museum had a governing board with representatives of The National Museum, The Museum of Copenhagen, The Library and Archives of the Danish Labour Movement, The University of Copenhagen, the National College of the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO), the Friends of the Workers' Museum, and the General Council of the Federation of Trade Unions.

scholarly journals Votes at work in Britain: shareholder monopolisation and the ‘single channel’

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan McGaughey
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Single Channel ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Board Governance ◽  
Policy Document ◽  
Participation Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
Private Corporations ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Enterprise Governance

Why do shareholders monopolise voting rights in UK companies, and are trade unions the only way to get meaningful workplace representation? In 1967 a Labour Party policy document first coined the phrase that a ‘single channel’ for representation should ‘in the normal’ case mean trade unions. Since then, it has been said the labour movement embraced an ‘adversarial’ rather than a ‘constitutional’ conception of corporations, neglecting legal rights to worker voice in enterprise governance. This article shows that matters were not so simple. It explains the substantial history of legal rights to vote in British workplaces, and competition from the rival constitutional conception: employee share schemes. The UK has the oldest corporations – namely universities – which have consistently embedded worker participation rights in law. Britain has among the world’s most sophisticated ‘second channel’ participation rights in pension board governance. Developing with collective bargaining, it had the world’s first private corporations with legal participation rights. Although major plans in the 1920s for codetermination in rail and coal fell through, it maintained a ‘third channel’ of worker representatives on boards during the 20th century in numerous sectors, including ports, gas, post, steel, and buses. At different points every major political party had general proposals for votes at work. The narrative of the ‘single channel’ of workplace representation, and an ‘adversarial’ conception of the company contains some truth, but there has never been one size of regulation for all forms of enterprise. (2018) 47(1) Industrial Law Journal 76.

scholarly journals Construction Safety Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
James William Cornish
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Construction Safety ◽  
Industrial Safety ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Codes Of Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Industrial Needs

<p>The development of industrial safety law in Britain and New Zealand and the origins of construction, safety law are outlined in Part I. The administration and interpretation of the Construction Act 1959 are described in Part II, and Part III highlights the comparable statute law in three Commonwealth countries. The thesis will assist persons engaged in industry, lawyers and departmental officers in the understanding of the law and its application to construction work. The information presented on overseas law will assist those involved in the task of reviewing and consolidating the New Zealand industrial safety, health and welfare legislation. The history of the British Factories Acts leading on to the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, described in Chapter 1, highlights the importance of a self-regulating, integrated statutory system and a professional inspectorate with an advisory role and residual enforcement powers. New Zealand safety law has developed as the country's industrial needs have determined, as will be seen from Chapter 2. Generally, British statutes have been adopted, but construction safety law is the exception and Chapter 3 shows that, from the earliest Bill introduced by Richard John Seddon in 1892 up to the present, the legislation covering the construction industry has been initiated and drafted with industry representation. The more empirical subjects such as current policy and practice, sanctions, codes, education, other legislation and reform, as well as the purpose, effect, extent and application of the Construction Act 1959 are discussed in Chapter 4. The results of the author's legal research and analysis are contained in Chapters 5 and 6 under the headings of 'Liabilities' and 'Technical Law'. The responsibilities of employers, workmen, safety supervisors, inspectors and the Crown are set out and explained in terms of the statute and the interpretation from the case law. The technical subjects include scaffolding, guardrails, brittle roofing, fall of objects, access, excavations, mechanical plant, demolition, eye protection, asbestos, work in compressed air, health and welfare. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 examine the present legislation, in Britain, Australia and Canada and indicate a trend towards a unified approach to occupational safety, health and welfare and one enactment for all places of work, and with separate regulations and codes of practice for each industry. This study has been carried out by the present Chief Safety Engineer of the Department of Labour who has been responsible for the administration of the Construction Act 1959 since 1968. A separately bound appendix includes a copy of the Construction Act 1959 and the Amendments (Appendix A), the Inspection of Building Appliances Bill 1892 (Appendix B), the Scaffolding Inspection Act 1906 (Appendix C), the Tasmanian Industrial Safety, Health and Welfare Act 1977 (Appendix D), the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act 1978 (Appendix E), and copies of the unreported judgments and decisions referred to in the thesis (Appendix F).</p>

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