The Determinants of Social Policy a Case Study: Regulating Health and Safety at the Workplace in Sweden

1983 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicente Navarro
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Health ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Important Determinant ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Occupational Health And Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
The U.S

This article presents an analysis and critique of the “technocratic” view of occupational health and safety policies, which sees the values of the personnel of the “postindustrial” regulatory agencies as the most important determinant of those policies. An alternate position is put forth which explains those occupational health and safety policies as primarily the result of different degrees of political power of the two major classes (capital and labor) and the set of influences exerted on the regulatory agencies by the instruments (e.g., political parties, unions, trade organizations) of those classes. It is shown how an analysis of the historical evolution of those classes in Sweden and their conflict in both civil and political societies better explains the Swedish occupational health and safety policies than the mere analysis of the regulators' views. It is concluded that the occupational health and safety policies in Sweden are not identical to the U.S. policies–as the “technocratic” theorists assume–but rather they offer more protection to the workers than the U.S. ones. This situation is a result of labor's greater power in Sweden than in the United States. The different class formations and class behavior in both societies are compared, and the implications of this comparison for occupational health and safety policies are discussed.

scholarly journals 1.E. Workshop: Comparative Public Health: Politics, science, and professionalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (Supplement_4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Occupational Health ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Occupational Health And Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Health Systems

Abstract Look around EUPHA, or any other public health conference. Public health is difficult to define, in theory and in practice. Its boundaries are all blurred, whether with medicine, schools, environmental protection or workplace safety inspectorates. Too often, we overstate the similarities between public health systems among countries. Efforts to promote networks, good practice, and even basic coordination have been undermined for decades by misunderstandings born of different educational, organizational, financial and political systems. The lack of comparison, and comparative political analysis in particular, also means that countries can have very similar debates about the proper nature and scope of public health, an about who is to blame for deficiencies, without awareness of when they are distinctive and when they are actually part of larger trends. This project aims to identify and explain variation in the scope and organization of public health systems in selected high-income countries. Based on a formalized comparative historical analysis of Austria, France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States, researchers in the study first mapped the various axes of divergence: workforce composition, organization, levels of government, relationship to medicine, and the extent to which public health encompassed adjacent areas such as environmental health and occupational health and safety. For each country we then followed both case studies (communicable disease control including vaccines, HIV/AIDS, tobacco control, diet and nutrition, occupational health and safety) as well as the legislative history of the public health field in order to identify its changing organization and scope. It then identifies the relative role of historical legacies, changing science, burden of disease and politics in explaining patterns of both divergence and convergence. This workshop presents four country specific case studies (France, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States) that identify the most important forms of variation and the political, scientific and professional drivers of convergence and divergence. Key messages Political organization and scope as images of public health are grossly under-researched and nonexistent in a comparative nature. Understanding the scope and organization of public health in different countries will permit better lesson-drawing and identification of relevant and effective levers of change.

scholarly journals Doing it Old School: Peer-led occupational safety training in the U.S. construction Industry

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 605-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clayton Sinyai ◽  
Pete Stafford ◽  
Chris Trahan
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Health ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Occupational Health And Safety ◽  
Safety Training ◽  
Peer Training ◽  
Building Trades ◽  
Apprenticeship Model ◽  
The U.S

Many labour organizations that sponsor occupational health and safety training champion “peer training,” preferring instructors drawn from the shopfloor over academically credentialed experts. But peer training is hardly new: in the skilled trades, master craftsmen have instructed apprentices since the Middle Ages. Building on the apprenticeship model of education, the U.S.-based construction unions have created a network of more than 4,000 peer trainers who provide occupational health and safety training to up to 100,000 men and women in the building trades each year.

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