Representing workers on occupational safety and health: some lessons from a largely ignored history

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12268
• Author: Michael Quinlan,David Walters
• Date: 01 July 2019
• Published date: 01 July 2019

Representing workers on occupational

safety and health: some lessons from a

largely ignored history

David Walters and Michael Quinlan

ABSTRACT

The decade from 1970 witnessed major reforms of occupational health and safety

(OSH) laws in Western Europe, North America and Australasia. The establishment

of worker representation in OSH was one of their most significant features. Largely

overlooked in commentary then or since however was the fact that worker represen-

tation in safety had a far longer history, having operated in coal mining from a cen-

tury earlier in some countries. The purpose of this paper is not so much to fill this

historical gap as to examine this earlier development in terms of its contribution to

better understand worker representation in OSH at the present time.

1 INTRODUCTION

Measures for representing workers’interests in OSH contribute to improved health

and safety outcomes (EU-OSHA, 2017). In most advanced market economies, statu-

tory provisions on worker representation in OSH are framed within a wider regula-

tory strategy originating some 50 years ago. Such approaches are now the norm for

OSH regulation and are reflected in international standards such as the 1981 ILO

Convention 155. Implicit within them are notions of trust and cooperation between

workers, their representatives, managers and employers, together with a shared inter-

est in OSH and support derived from highly collectivised industrial relations. They

are a product of a period when assumptions could be made that the balance of power

between capital and organised labour was supportive of cooperation between repre-

sentatives and their managers. But research on labour relations generally indicates

times have changed, and such assumptions are no longer valid (Frege and Kelly,

2004). As Walters and Wadsworth (2019) have recently shown, this is especially so

in relation to the effective practice of representation and consultation on OSH.

However, historical reflection suggests a different way of framing worker represen-

tation and consultation on OSH, which may be more relevant in current contexts. In

the UK and Australia, statutory measures giving workers rights to OSH representa-

tion in coal mining predate other sectors by nearly a century. In this article, we argue

that conflict in labour relations in mining and the resistance of miners to exploitation

of their safety were strong influences on their origin, development and operation. The

❒David Walters, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII

Ave, Cardiff CF103AT, UK and Michael Quinlan, School of Management, University of New South

Wales Business School, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Correspondence should be addressed to

Professor David Walters, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Glamorgan Building, King

Edward VII Ave, Cardiff CF103AT, UK. E-mail: waltersd@cardiff.ac.uk

Industrial Relations Journal 50:4, 399–414

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2019 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

following account explores the significance of these historical antecedents in relation

to both current mineworker representation practices and worker OSH representation

in other sectors.

There is an extensive literature on the history of coal miners’organisation, their

struggles to remedy hazardous conditions and the regulation of mine safety in the

UK, and the same is generally true for Australia, although OHS studies mainly focus

on mine disasters rather than regulatory evolution (see, e.g. Galloway, 1882; Bryan,

1975; Church et al., 1986; Gollan, 1963; Ross, 1970; Piggin and Lee, 1992; Dingsdag,

1993). These studies provide valuable accounts of the role of unions, the limited ca-

pacity of mine managers to deliver safety along with inadequate regulatory inspection

by the state and a wider context for understanding OHS in coal mining. While we re-

fer to some of this work, our concern is not to re-examine/reprise these developments.

Rather, our focus is on one aspect of the regulatory struggle that seldom receives

more than minimal acknowledgement in these accounts but which we argue has par-

ticular salience to contemporary debates of worker involvement in OHS, namely,

miners’campaign to inspect coal mines and thereby help safeguard their own safety.

2 THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF STATUTORY PROVISIONS ON

WORKER REPRESENTATION IN COAL MINES IN THE UK

The history of coal mining in the UK, its huge scale and growth in the 19th century

and early 20th century and its subsequent decline are well documented. Hundreds

of thousands of miners were employed in the industry by the time coal production

peaked at 287 million tonnes in 1913 (Church et al., 1986: 588). Accounts show this

growth was in part a response to demand and in part to the development of technol-

ogies, which allowed extraction from increasingly deeper levels, with consequent risks

to the miners involved. These consequences were demonstrated with both the frequent

occurrence of multiple fatality disasters, which fuelled calls for regulatory interven-

tion (e.g. Duckham and Duckham, 1973; Mills, 2010), and a much greater everyday

toll of death and disease, which was emblematic of mining and a constant presence in

mining communities (Johnston and McIvor, 2007; Rosen, 1995; Williams, 1998).

Quantification of the full extent of the harmful consequences of mining was hampered

by the absence of reliable reporting and the limited official recognition of its effects on

health in the 19th and early 20th centuries but embedded in the tacit knowledge held

by miners and their communities and discussed in social histories of the period (see,

e.g. Williams, 1998; Bloor, 2000).

Histories of mining unions also address their role in regulatory reform (see, e.g.

Page Arnot’sofficial national and regional histories;

1

Jaffe, 1991), as do those of so-

cial reformers and other key players. Wider social and labour histories (e.g. Pelling,

1971; Webb and Webb, 1894) also give some attention to British miners’OSH and in-

dicate how it was pivotal in the mobilisation of their collective organisation.

Provisions for the appointment of workmen’s inspectors in coal mines appeared in

the Coal Mines Regulation Act 1872. This was the first statute with requirements en-

titling workers to representation on health and safety anywhere in the world. Section

51 stated persons employed in a mine may appoint, at their own cost, two of their

1

Between 1949 and 1979, R. Page Arnot wrote a four-volume history of the miners and their trade unions,

collectively referred to as The Miners: 1889–1946, as well as regional histories such as that of South Wales

(Page Arnot, 1967).

400 David Walters and Michael Quinlan

© 2019 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd