Recent health and safety legislation in the United Kingdom comes at a time of economic crisis. The only way of understanding its impact is to look back at the roles of employers, the State, trade unions, workers, and the medical establishment over the past 150 years since the rise of industrial capital. In many ways, issues that were current at the turn of the century—such as the conflict between profits and health, whether to clean up the production process or insulate workers from its hazards, compensation, and employers' liability—are still very much present today, although these issues are often obscured by the notions that there is an identity of interest between management and workers over health and safety and that profits and safety go together. The role of the trade unions in dealing with existing and new hazards of production has historically been ambiguous, yet the need for them to develop an overall policy of prevention has always been obvious. Although they are now part of the governing apparatus, other arms of the State—in particular the civil service—initiate changes in health and safety organization, while trade unions make sure they are enacted. The development of trade-union area health and safety groups represents the most important potential change and may well provide the necessary focus for information and organization to cut through the “concerned” propaganda from management and its safety committees and start the long-awaited cleanup of industry.
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