Employee Representation Plans in the United States, Canada, and Australia: An Employer Response to Workplace Democracy

Patmore, Greg

doi:10.1215/15476715-2005-009

Cited by 16 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The earliest instances of representative employee participation in OHS reflect the impact of the Safety First Movement, originating in the US steel industry in 1908, due to public outcry over accident rates and introduction of workers' compensation legislation. The movement spread to other North American industries and influenced the broader non‐union representation schemes of that era in the USA, such as the Rockefeller Plan at Colorado Fuel and Iron in 1915 (Patmore 2006b: 43, 64). In Australia, the NSW Government Railways pioneered safety committees from 1915 (Patmore 1985: 311–12).…”

Section: Theoretical Framework and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, contemporary case studies encompass particular phases of management or organizational strategies, or institutional regulation, without capturing the impact of change over time. Recent interest in historical organizational examples of non‐union employee representation in North America also remain based on short time periods (Kaufman 2000: 21–60; Patmore 2006b).…”

Section: Theoretical Framework and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unlike the British bodies prior to 1996, the safety committees in this study were non‐union structures, rather than having employee representatives appointed by unions, before and after legislation. Historically, non‐union forms of general employee representation frequently functioned as part of a union avoidance strategy, particularly in the USA (Kaufman 2000; Patmore 2006b). Much of the contemporary Anglo‐Saxon literature has focused on the potential for union avoidance or substitution (Dundoon 2002; Gollan 2000; Markey 2007; Terry 1999; Towers 1997).…”

Section: Theoretical Framework and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

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

Markey

Patmore

2011

British Journal of Industrial Relations

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: Theoretical Framework and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Framework and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Framework and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

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

Markey

Patmore

2011

British Journal of Industrial Relations

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This form of joint representation differed from others by promoting an equal footing for both employers and employees and it encompassed councils that operated at a national, industry, district and even workshop level. Not only was Whitleyism enthusiastically received in some quarters in Britain, it also influenced debates in North America and initiatives in Australia (Patmore, 2006). This development effectively reinforced the revisionist position on scientific management that had developed in the US.…”

Section: Scientific Management Safety and Representation In Britainmentioning

confidence: 92%

Intended or Unintended Consequences? A Critical Reappraisal of the Safety First Movement and its Non-Union Safety Committees

Taksa

2009

Economic and Industrial Democracy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

For the most part, the extensive literature produced on joint labour—management safety committees since the 1970s has neglected historical antecedents. To provide insights from the past, this article focuses on America's early 20th-century Safety First Movement, which sought to reduce accidents through the adoption of non-union safety committees and re-engineering techniques, based on various aspects of scientific management. By assessing the relationship between these `soft' and `hard' dimensions of Safety First, this article demonstrates that the two were united in practical terms not only in the US but also in Britain and Australia. This fusion, it is argued, provided a means of obtaining workers' consent for organizational and workplace changes and overcoming prevailing resistance to the methods associated with scientific management. In doing so, it emphasizes the value of focusing on management goals and anticipated consequences of employee participation and representation.

show abstract

“…Syncrude is 25 percent owned by Imperial and currently managed by Exxon, Imperial's parent company. Its predecessor, Standard Oil, spent many years fending off unionization, assisted in part by former Prime Minister MacKenzie King (Grant 1998;Patmore 2006;Rees 2010). After at least two attempts in the late 1970s, Syncrude employees are still not unionized.…”

Section: Fort Mcmurray Second Largest City In Newfoundlandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community by Necessity: Security, Insecurity, and the Flattening of Class in Fort McMurray

Major

Winters²

2013

Can. J. Soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

High wages in the oil sands well exceed the Canadian average, making complex class differences less apparent here than elsewhere. This lends itself to a homogenizing narrative of community despite differences in wages, background, citizenship status, and so on. Wolf's useful counter-framework outlines specific processes by which workers are situated, and by which they situate themselves, in labour hierarchies within the accumulation process. Drawing on interviews and participant observation involving two groups (university-educated immigrant professionals and high-school educated mine labourers and tradespeople from Newfoundland), we argue that layers of precariousness in both these groups thrust them into "community by necessity." The unsettling nature of work in the oil sands emerges as a story within a story. In the larger narrative, where "Fort McMurray is jobs," community is invoked as a place in which household financial security is possible. Inherent in that security, however, is a story of pervasive insecurity wrought by the possibility of injury on the job, paternalism, or redundancies created through company restructuring and economic crises. "Community" is necessary to keep people in place (literally and metaphorically) and at the same time elides ongoing struggles against dispossession.

show abstract

Employee Representation Plans in the United States, Canada, and Australia: An Employer Response to Workplace Democracy

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

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

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

Intended or Unintended Consequences? A Critical Reappraisal of the Safety First Movement and its Non-Union Safety Committees

Community by Necessity: Security, Insecurity, and the Flattening of Class in Fort McMurray

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About