Occupational Safety and Health - Historical Excursus and Current Situation - Essay Example

Occupational Safety and Health The right to safe and healthy working conditions has gained widespread interest at the global, regional and national levels. Professionals, people organizations, federal and state governments around the world have recognized the universality, indivisibility, inalienability and interdependency of the human right to access a secure and hazard free working environment (WBC, 1996). Occupational safety and health has gained recognition as a fundamental human right over time and hence the continued interest. According to the International Labour Organization, occupational safety is an inter-wined disciplinary area focusing on the welfare and protection of the health of individuals who are productively under employment. The Organization has also made an attempt to explain issues of health services for workers. These are essentially activities that are aimed at providing guidelines to both the employers and the workers on best practices that are basically helpful in preventing work place injuries. They also stipulate how organizations should ensure that their employees remain physically and mentally healthy despite their continued delivery of services (WBC, 1996). All occupational health and safety programs are henceforth aimed at fostering a safe working environment. The development of laws and regulations has occurred gradually and been triggered by various events and factors. The process started as long as the age of scientific inventions and consequently industrialization that saw man realistically exposed to dangers of working with chemicals and machines (Heinrich, 1931). This paper attempts to give a chronological account of the factors that facilitated the developments. The Period Before 1900 At this time world was experiencing significant developments in Industrial Revolution. This became associated with public concern for safety problems. The masses became aggressive about acts of negligence on the side of workers, environment and the society at large. In USA, for example these concerns became exemplified by labour unrest, and social and political protest. The above scenario influenced the creation of the first department of factory inspection in Massachusetts in, 1867. This was later followed by enactment of the first occupational safety law that required guards for textile spinning machinery. Later more states passed legislation trying to address industrial safety. These new developments did not live to the expectation because as the industrial advancement intensified more labour, social and political protests were witnessed (Gerrard, 1994). All along this period employers were able to successfully avoid financial responsibility for occupational injuries. The tussle was, however, heightening as more workers launched more suits seeking compensation for injuries sustained at the work place. Between 1900 to 1920 At the turn of new century, workers were winning court suits under common law for negligence. This triggered the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Civic Federation lobby for compensation legislation for workers in 1910. The passing of these laws in the ensuing decade provided for a liability insurance system that would assure injured workers of a specific economic protection. For employers this was much better than being subjected to unpredictable and often very high payments in successful lawsuits (Heinrich, 1931). Between 1920 to 1945 The work of Heinrich on cost-benefit analysis in 1930s brought about a new look in this field (Heinrich, 1931). In his work, he assessed the total cost of occupational injuries to firms. The technique helped in analyzing the costs of various regulations versus their accruing benefits. The predisposing financial costs incurred in observance of occupational health and safety for instance, were weighed against the expenses on medical treatment and compensation schemes that resulted from work place injuries as a result of non-compliance to standards. According to Heinrich, one can hold certain parameters constant and then estimate the social costs such as pain, suffering and even reduced quality of life. Between 1945 to 1960 The world did not pay much attention to the health and safety issues in the immediate post world war era. This continued until an incidence in Farmington when a coal mine explosion left seventy eight workers dead. This disaster led to the enactment of two major legislations in the USA in the years 1969 and 1970. Provisions of the two legislations mandated the creation of legal standards applying at the work place to health and safety hazards (Gerrard, 1994). This move reawakened the world once again that more work needed to be done to improve safety standards at the work place. Between 1960 to 1980 By 1960s the focus of many trade unionists shifted to matters of quality of life of workers. Their major concerns touched on job satisfaction and security. Soon afterwards a more critical approach was applied and this resulted from continued awareness on concepts of environmental health and their origin. Works raised grievances on what they observed as many potential risks in their places of work (Creighton & Gunnigham, 1985). The pressure bore fruits as both the policy on occupational health and safety and regulation were revised in line with workers concerns. With these new developments the disciplinary concept of occupational health and safety had gained a new foundation. Measures were also adopted that would be used to address conflicts of health matters in a manner satisfactory to all the parties. Managers were advised to involve their employees more often whenever they were to formulate safety and health strategies for their entities. Sweden for example, created an independent agency, under a legislative act to look into the execution of all the regulations that had been enforced by the time (Kelman, 1981). Other Scandinavian countries introduced similar legislations namely Denmark and Norway (Gustavsen, 1985). All these advancements were done in light of the many flaws that were contained in the existing regulations that had been termed as being ineffectively specific and somewhat literal. By this time the tone was a move towards establishing an integrated system in the USA and Europe. At the same time, another regulation was established which required that employers must create systems of work that would guarantee safety of their employees. Between 1980 to 2000 In this period major developments were witnessed. Issues to do with demographic as well as social changes like increase in disability pensions, ageing of the working population and absenteeism resulting from body injuries necessitated certain significant reforms on the systems of occupational health and safety. The reforms directed that every effort must be put in place to preserve the working capacity, particularly of old workers as this was seen as vital in bringing down cases of early retirement. In the Netherlands, for instance, the amendment of the Dutch ARBO Act (Kroon & overeynder, 1991) focused on preventing workers’ disability. It also provided for various requirements that were recognized as being desirable to promote safety of employees at plant level. In this period also a new dimension came in. and this was the realization that there were difficulties in interpretation monitoring and enforcement of performance standards. This called for harmonization of standards and approach. National agencies were formulated to handle the duty of harmonization. This approach became desirable to a number of countries Australia being one of them. The federal government of Australia created what they called the ‘National Occupational Health and Safety Commission’ and was charged with the responsibility of development of national standards (WBC, 1996). From 2000 to date We are now at an age when the tone of corporate social responsibility is on the rise. Many marketing philosophies have been formulated one of them being the societal approach. This calls for entities to be extremely careful of how they relate with the environment. The idea of benchmarking is also gaining widespread acceptance, whereby companies compare themselves with the best operators in a certain field or industry. The above factors explain why, in recent years there has been the adoption of procedures that should be followed in risk assessment and the manner in which organizations are to benchmark themselves against the occupational health and safety leaders in their sector. With regard to cost-benefit analysis, stakeholders often require that the techniques used for this analysis be more objective as opposed to the extensive application of many assumptions as was the case traditionally (COSHH, 2002). The argumentations aim at eliminating subjectivity and value-based assumptions in the occupational health and safety. References COSHH, (2002) Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations Creighton B. & Gunningham N. (1985). Sydney: Croom Helm Australia Gerrard, M. B. (1994). Whose backyard, whose risk? Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press Gustavsen, B. (1985). 'Training for work environment reform in Norway :The Organizational practice of Democracy. Wiley: Chichester. Heinrich, W. H. (1931). Industrial Accident Prevention. McGraw-Hill Kelman, S. (1981). Regulating America, regulating Sweden: A comparative study of occupational safety and health policy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kroon, P.J. & Overeynder, M.A. (1991). Occupational Heath Services in Six Member States of the EC. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. WBC, (1996). Comparison of occupational health and safety statutes, Workers' Read More