Occupational health and safety (OHS) representatives and committees are the principal form of employee participation mandated by legislation in AngloSaxon 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.
From 1915—1942 Colorado Fuel and Iron (CFI) Company's employee publications were an important vehicle for advertising the company's liberal labor policies to its employees and the general pubic. The Industrial Bulletin in particular was part of a strategy by CFI and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the primary stockholder, to win back public support following the Ludlow Massacre and champion his Employee Representation Plan (ERP) as a civilized approach to labor relations. While the later Blast did not carry as much information concerning the ERP as the Industrial Bulletin, it was still an important means for the company to promote the ERP and its welfare policies, particularly during the pro-Labor climate of the New Deal. CFI management combined the strategies of trivialization and capitulation in running their employee publications. While trivialization tried to show that management was concerned with their employees, capitulation ensured that there was no criticism of management.
I wish to thank the three anonymous referees of the JIR for their helpful comments. This article examines Craypo and Nissen's concept of 'labour-community' coali tions. These coalitions fight retrenchment and plant closure in small towns and cities. They can include traditional industrial relations 'actors' such as unions. Coalitions can also include groups that traditional industrial relations theory does not capture, such as the clergy, the press, politicians and local entrepreneurs. This article strengthens Craypo and Nissen's concept by, for example, incorporating state enterprise and recognising that local management may play an important role in assisting these coalitions. It also briefly examines the implications of these coalitions for industrial relations theory, contrasting Dunlop's 'actors' with Dabscheck's 'interactors'. The article focuses on the example of the federal government's Lithgow Small Arms Factory during the period 1918 to 1932.
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