Alan Hall - The Subjectivities and Politics of Occupational Risk: Mines, Farms and Auto Factories

The Subjectivities and Politics of Occupational Risk links restructuring in three industries to shifts in risk subjectivities and politics, both within workplaces and within the safety management and regulative spheres, and examines the conflict and changes in law, political discourses and management approaches that often result. The state and corporate governance emphasis on worker participation and worker rights, internal responsibility, and self-regulative technologies are understood as corporate and state efforts to reconstruct control and responsibility for Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) risks within the context of a globalized neoliberal economy. Part 1 presents a conceptual framework for understanding the subjective bases of worker responses to health and safety hazards using Bourdieus concept of habitus and the sociology of risk concepts of trust and uncertainty. Part 2 demonstrates the restructuring arguments using three different industry case studies of multiple mines, farms and auto parts plants.

The final chapter draws out the implications of the evidence and theory for social change and presents several recommendations for a more worker-centred politics of health and safety. The book will appeal to social scientists interested in health and safety, work, employment relations and labour law, as well as worker advocates and activists.

Alan Hall recently retired from the Department of Sociology at Memorial University where he now holds an Honorary Research Professor position. His most recent 2020 publications are a co-authored book on employment standards published by University of Toronto Press, and an article in Economic and Industrial Democracy on vulnerable workers.

Making Sense of Womens Practices, Perceptions and Tastes

A Half Century of Attitude and Policy Change

Policy into Practice

Mines, Farms and Auto Factories

Between Concepts and Empirical Grounds

The New Digital Platforms of Production and Consumption

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Advances-in-Sociology/book-series/SE0511

First published 2021

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2021 Alan Hall

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ISBN: 978-0-367-46995-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-03268-7 (ebk)

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I thank my colleagues for their crucial participation in the research data collection, including Dr Anne Forrest (University of Windsor) and Dr Alan Sears (Ryerson University) for the auto study research and Dr Veronica Mogyrody for the organic farm study research. For the accident and injury reporting study, thanks to Dr Tanya Basok (University of Windsor), Dr Jamey Essex (University of Windsor) and Dr Urvashi Soni Sinha (University of Windsor) for their work. For their invaluable contributions to the second worker representative study, thanks to Andy King (USWA), Dr Wayne Lewchuk (McMaster University), Dr John Oudyk (OHCOW) and Dr Syed Naqvi (OHCOW). A special thanks as well to several research assistants who worked on these studies, especially Dr Susan Sverdup-Phillips and Niki Carlan. I also wish to acknowledge the funding received from the Social Science and Research Council Canada, Auto21, the University of Windsor Environmental Centre and the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. A major expression of gratitude to all the workers, farmers, union officials, managers and others who participated in these studies. I have always felt that I failed to fully present your voices in my previous work and I hope this presentation rectifies that failure. Finally, a special thanks to my partner, Lynne Phillips, who has cheerfully endured my frustration and grumpiness while encouraging the completion of this work.

Though they rarely garner the headlines of a terrorist bombing, workplace injuries can be just as horrific. The young summer student who is torn apart in a large mixing machine, the middle-aged worker whose scalp is ripped from her head when her hair is caught in a machine or the older worker who is burnt to ashes in a blast furnace, each event unspeakable in terms of the pain and horror for the persons involved, to speak nothing of the victims families, co-workers and friends (Dudgeon, 2016). Workplace-contracted diseases such as asbestosis or silicosis are no less disturbing (Leyton, 1975: Storey and Lewchuk, 2000). The slow painful deterioration and death that many workers and their families are forced to endure make one wonder if the people who suffer a quick accidental death are the lucky ones. Even those who live through the excruciating pain of non-fatal chronic ailments from musculoskeletal degeneration (MSDs) to repetitive injuries (RSIs) making life a living hell for many may well pause to wonder if the living workplace victims are the ones who drew the short straws (Beardwood, Kirsh and Clark, 2005; Tarasuk and Eakin, 1995). Of course, thinking about which is worse the quick fatal insult or the agonizing deterioration of the body is not what is on the minds of most injured workers or their families. Along with getting through each day, for them the nagging question is why did this happen?