1st Edition

The Regulation and Management of Workplace Health and Safety Historical and Emerging Trends

    212 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    212 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    The book provides a collection of cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary research-based chapters on work, workers and the regulation and management of workplace health and safety. Featuring research from Australia, Europe and North America, the chapters traverse important historical examples and place important, emerging contemporary trends, like work in the gig economy, into wider international and historical perspectives. The authors are leading authorities in their fields.

    The book contributes to advancing our knowledge – empirical and theoretical – of the ways in which labour market dynamics, management strategies, state regulation and public policy, and union organisation affect outcomes for workers. It features in-depth exploration of, and reflection on, some of the major labour market challenges facing workers, and analysis of strengths and weaknesses of responses to those challenges, whether via management, state regulation or collective employee voice. The chapters highlight shifts in in/equality of outcomes; access to security and flexibility at work; genuine access to workplace voice and decision-making; and the implications of different avenues and mechanisms for regulating work and employment.

    The text is aimed at researchers, undergraduate and postgraduate students in work and organisational studies, industrial/employment relations and human resource management, workplace (or occupational) health and safety, employment law, and labour history. It will also be of particular interest to policy makers and practitioners working in the field of workplace health and safety.

    1. Michael Quinlan — intellectual journey of a scholar, teacher and policy expert
    Peter Sheldon & Sarah Gregson
    2. Rebellious Workers: Insubordination and democratic mobilisation in Australia in the 1910s
    Terry Irving
    3. The West Gate Bridge Collapse: How disaster happens
    Sarah Gregson & Elizabeth Humphrys
    4. Economic liberalisation of road freight transport in the EU and the USA
    Michael H. Belzer & Annette Thörnquist
    5. Precarious employment and the regulation of occupational health and safety: Prevention, compensation and return to work
    Katherine Lippel & Annie Thébaud-Mony
    6. Protecting ‘gig economy’ workers through regulatory innovation: Controlling contract networks within digital networks
    Igor Nossar
    7. Representing workers on safety and health: the current challenge?
    David Walters
    8. Prosecutions under the Australian Work Health and Safety Acts: New sanctions, old approaches
    Richard Johnstone
    Postscript: Inequality, deprivation/resistance and building a sustainable society
    Michael Quinlan

    Biography

    Peter Sheldon is a Professor in the School of Management at the UNSW Business School, Australia, Director of its Industrial Relations Research Centre, and an Executive Editor of its Economic and Industrial Relations Review.

    Sarah Gregson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management at the UNSW Business School, Australia and Deputy Editor of Labour History.

    Russell Lansbury is Emeritus Professor of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School, Australia.

    Karin Sanders is a Professor of Human Resources Management and Organisational Behaviour in the School of Management at the UNSW Business School, Australia.