Importance of Safety and Health - Essay Example

"Importance of Safety and Health" is a remarkable example of a paper on the health system.
Occupational health and safety are critical to account for in the societal setting. The emergence of the contemporary regime of occupational health and safety was subject to the influence of many different players. In particular, the state, employers, and the workplace played a key role in the establishment of this regime. Each of these three parties pushed for the agenda that best suited their respective duty and/or responsibility in contemporary society. The interaction and relation between the state, employers, and the workplace instituted the platform upon which occupational health and safety concerns were addressed.

The state is the central authority in many nations across the globe. The responsibility of the state is to promote the welfare of the public by formulating and implementing policies relevant to social, economic, and political growth and development. In this respect, the state played a proactive or responsive role in the establishment of the contemporary occupational health and safety regime (Tucker, 1990). In other words, the state assessed the implications of occupational relationships in society. Through such assessments, there was a need to regulate health and safety matters in the society. The idea was to ensure that economic actions by employers do not jeopardize employee welfare and subsequent welfare of the larger society. As a result, the state formulated and implemented policies that addressed contemporary health and safety concerns in society, and especially in workplace settings.

Employers constitute a key player in today’s occupational health and safety regime. In light of this regime, employers had to take responsibility and accountability for their actions in society. The role of employers in the establishment of the regime, therefore, depicted the commitment to foster safe and healthful working conditions for employees. Occupational health and safety provisions set standards and regulatory procedures with which employers have to comply. In this respect, employers had to define their relationships, duties, and responsibilities towards the people who work for and with them. Most importantly, employers influenced their level of integration into the new health and safety regime.

The essence of the contemporary occupational health and safety regime was to provide an operational platform for mutual benefits among the state, employers, and the workplace (Tucker, 1990). In this context, the workplace represents the many different employees who work for and with employees. The idea of occupational health and safety made it difficult for employers to exploit their employees, or subject them to harmful, unsafe, and unhealthy working conditions. The role of the workplace in establishing the regime, therefore, revolved around ensuring key interests, concerns, and issues are captured for improved safety and healthful conditions in work environments.

Moreover, the workplace acted as the primary identifier of oversight matters that policymakers could have unintentionally failed to capture at the onset of the regime. Most importantly, workplace settings served as the key link between employers and the state as far as the contemporary occupational health and safety regime was concerned (Tucker, 1990). Finally, the workplace played the role of mobilizing the state to act proactively and/or responsively in the establishment of the regime.