Health and safety legislation in the UK up to 1974 can be characterized as: partial coverage of the workforce; limited scope of legislation; snail-like progress; advances often conceded grudgingly; coverage of many industries and many subjects historically very recent.
Contrary to many views that unions did not generally take health ...
(Show more)Health and safety legislation in the UK up to 1974 can be characterized as: partial coverage of the workforce; limited scope of legislation; snail-like progress; advances often conceded grudgingly; coverage of many industries and many subjects historically very recent.
Contrary to many views that unions did not generally take health and safety seriously, for most of the period (starting particularly with the coalminers in the 1840s) the most enduring, and often the most important, force for health and safety regulation has been trade unionism. The absence of trade union pressure either slows down or reduces the likelihood of change. The method of ‘legal enactment’ rather than collective bargaining (using strikes) has been central, with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) a permanent lobby for health and safety legislation.
The experience of the 1945–70 period would confirm both the slowness of legislation and the central role of trade unionism. Attempts at implementing the recommendations of the (1946–49) Gowers Committee on Health, Welfare, and Safety in Non-Industrial Employment dominated events up to the mid-1960s, with the TUC the main lobby for this. Various enabling Acts, the Agriculture Acts of 1952 and 1956, and then the Offices Act 1960, stumbled onto the statute book; the last led directly to the more substantial Offices, Shops and Railway Premises (OSRP) Act 1963. Despite this measure bringing millions of employees some safety protection for the first time, millions more remained outside any statutory protection or inspection regime.
By the early 1960s, the relative failure of voluntary methods to improve accident prevention under the Factories Acts had spawned the union demand (particularly by the Foundry Workers) for legislation on compulsory safety committees and safety delegates/representatives. This became TUC policy in 1964; after a failed attempt at encouraging voluntary reform by employers the Labour government introduced a Bill in 1970 to effect this (though it fell with the government’s election defeat). The TUC’s conversion to compulsion away from voluntarism was an important shift (though voluntary developments were still encouraged in the absence of law).
In the mid-1960s TUC policy was also groping towards advocating a central body to regulate health and safety, with all employment covered. In 1954 the National Joint Advisory Council of the Ministry of Labour (on which the TUC was represented) had set up an Industrial Safety sub-committee; in 1967 this was upgraded into an Industrial Safety Advisory Council, making the TUC voice more prominent. In that latter year the Ministry of Labour suggested new legislation to replace the Factories Act and the OSRP Act. It was a short step to the (1970–72) Robens Committee on Safety and Health at Work. Although the Department of Employment successfully advocated a shift from the traditional approach of legislation based on premises and operations to one based on the employment relationship, the new Health and Safety at Work etc Act of 1974, as an enabling Act, would coexist for a long period with the detailed standards of pre-1974 legislation.
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