Health, Safety and Industrial Democracy: Some Further Considerations.

This article presents a study on industrial health and safety considerations in Great Britain. First, the finding that unionized employees are disproportionately concentrated in the high accident rate industries should go a considerable way towards diffusing criticism that the decision that led to safety representatives being union, as opposed to employee appointed, can only be justified on industrial relations, and not on health and safety grounds. And secondly, the finding that the high accident rate industries are also those which have a disproportionate amount of organized and non-organized conflict clearly suggest that the potential impact of the safety representative/committee functions in improving workplace health and safety will inevitably be much influenced by the larger industrial relations context.