Safety or Profit?

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.

Theo Nichols, David Walters

List of Tables and Charts Abbreviations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction David Walters and Theo Nichols PART I. ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING, LABOR MARKET STRATIFICATION, AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES FOR HEALTH AND SAFETY Chapter 1. Precarity and Workplace Well-Being: A General Review Michael Quinlan Chapter 2. A Gender Perspective on Work, Regulation, and Their Effects on Women's Health, Safety and Well-Being Katherine Lippel and Karen Messing PART II. NEW GOVERNANCE, ORGANIZED LABOR, DEREGULATION, DECRIMINALIZATION, AND THE NEO-LIBERAL AGENDA Chapter 3. Resilience Within a Weaker Work Environment System-The Position and Influence of Swedish Safety Representatives Kaj Frick Chapter 4. Old Lessons for New Governance: Safety or Profit and the New Conventional Wisdom Eric Tucker Chapter 5. Safety, Profits, and the New Politics of Regulation Steve Tombs and David Whyte Chapter 6. Decriminalization of Health and Safety at Work in Australia Richard Johnstone PART III. THE ROLE AND LIMITS OF EVIDENCE Chapter 7. Competing Interests at Play? The Struggle for Occupational Cancer Prevention in the UK Andrew Watterson Chapter 8. The Limits and Possibilities of the Structures and Procedures for Health and Safety Regulation in Ontario, Canada Wayne Lewchuk Chapter 9. From Piper Alpha to Deepwater Horizon Charles Woolfson Afterword Theo Nichols and David Walters References Meet the Contributors Index