A Trade Union Perspective on “The New View” of Health and Safety

The New View of Health and Safety focuses in part on identifying and controlling hazards, providing a means for systems to fail safely (resilience engineering), and involving workers and their representatives in the process.

Workers and Unions have strived to achieve these same goals for years, but have not yet been able to achieve the same traction with employers that the New View of Health and Safety practitioners have accomplished.

Many elements of the New View of Health and Safety are consistent with what they have long promoted, and as such are extremely compatible with their view of the Trade Union approach to health and safety.

This paper examines three elements of the New View of Health and Safety and compares them to the Trade Union approach to health and safety.