Employee Participation in Health and Safety in the Australian Steel Industry, 1935-2006

Occupational health and safety (OHS) representatives and committees are the principal form of employee participation mandated by legislation in Anglo-Saxon countries, and therefore have a strong base. However, their existence precedes legislation in some significant cases. This article undertakes a 70-year historical analysis of the effectiveness and operations of one significant example of pre-legislative OHS committees in an Australian steelworks. The study finds that effectiveness of the committees as a form of participation depended on a complex complementarity of variables, including relationship with unions, the nature of management commitment, the organizational industrial relations climate and the political and institutional macro environment, consistent with 'favourable conjunctures' theory.