| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 60

REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

Eric Tucker, ed. Working Disasters: The Politics of Recognition and Response (Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing 2006)

PEOPLE ARE SHOCKED to hear about a death on the street or in a public place, and even more shocked when they hear that the death resulted from an assault. When hundreds die in such circumstances, we call it a 'disaster,' and expect the authorities to act with justice and urgency.

When is the death of a worker in the workplace noticed? Or, more to the point, when does the death of numbers of workers attract enough attention to elicit shock, outrage, and demand for change in working conditions or regulation to protect these people?

It mostly does not happen, even in cases where hundreds of workers are injured or die, and in Working Disasters: The Politics of Recognition and Response, Eric Tucker and his contributing authors analyze a number of high-profile 'working disasters' to see why this is so. The book is well researched, analytically rigorous and, above all, political. It lays bare the outlines of the social process of disaster recognition and the political-economic process of response through absorbing examination of disasters connected to the variety of occupations and working conditions in which these disasters occurred.

The central thesis is that the recognition and quality of response to an incident involving death or injury depends on prevailing 'social constructions' which dictate what qualifies as a 'disaster.' When it comes to the workplace, these constructions reflect a social context in which the death and incapacitation of workers has been by and large accepted, that is, normalized and legitimized. Those who demand appropriate recognition and response to such a disaster find themselves fighting against well rooted assumptions that support a system of labour in which workers are denied a stake in the product, process, or sociality of the activity to which they devote the best part of their lives; or put another way, just as we accept the systemic subordination and powerlessness of workers as normal, so do we accept as uneventful the tragedy of workplace injury and death.

It was only recently, after all, that those who control the world of work were even expected to be concerned about the health and safety of their workers, and even now, this official concern is still in a precarious state. The social constructions governing recognition and response are fundamentally political, Tucker points out, because divergent social interests, motives, and knowledge generate competing descriptions of reality. Since capital is more powerful and better organized than labour, it is much better able to have its versions of reality accepted as dominant.

This is the basis of a political economy of recognition and response, to which the book adds a penetrating analysis of industrial relations and institutions of state that could be used to question even the most 'noble' of disasters, e.g. those that end tragically for such voluntary risk takers as police, firemen, soldiers and astronauts. Are these 'heroes' really 'voluntary risk takers?' Tucker asks, or are they workers who put too much faith in the care and competence of their managers? Even 'natural disasters' such as hurricanes raise questions about the vulnerability of the community because of contingent social or political conditions.

A study of long-haul truck transport in Australia by Michael Quinlan, Claire Mayhew, and Richard Johnstone demonstrates, amongst other things, how recognition can be impeded where fatalities are incremental and widespread. In this case, regulatory responses were based on Highway Traffic rules, rather than occupational health and safety, and were totally inadequate to address problems created by a subcontracting system that caused excessive hours, speeding, and use of drug stimulants. A 'blame the victim' theme adopted by safety authorities and media focused on driver behaviour, and employed an increasingly influential neo-liberal focus on individual agency, responsibility, and risk management, rather than notions of collective welfare and state intervention.

In another study, Andrew Hopkins contrasts the lack of recognition and appropriate response in road transport to an epidemic of Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI) in Australia in which he illustrates the importance of dominant vocabulary. Recognition in this case was signaled by the term 'injury' rather than 'occupational neurosis' or even 'regional pain syndrome,' a term initially advocated by some medical authorities. The cause of the epidemic was not just in new technology, as is so often argued, but rather in a labour process shaped by speed-up and staff cutbacks. In this case, recognition led to response, as the Labour government drafted regulations on speed and regular breaks. Employees were reclassified as administrative assistants, assigned broader duties, and provided ergonomically-designed furniture. In the United States, however, where the prominent explanation of the epidemic was based on the concept of 'neurosis,' corresponding explanations tended to take responsibility away from the workplace, with the result that workers' compensation was denied to many injured workers.

The role of Workers' Compensation Boards (WCB) in shaping recognition and response is well-illustrated in the struggle of fluorspar miners in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland to gain recognition for the lung diseases from which they were dying in the mid-20th century. Richard Rennie describes how political action by the community and union came up against a persistent pattern of minimalization, as the government of the day was more concerned about economic consequences that would follow from recognition. Not only did excessively high dust levels persist throughout, but many disabled miners died awaiting compensation. The extent to which injury statistics are dependent on acceptance of claims by a WCB reflects a 'political economy of knowledge' which determines whether a problem will even surface in the public domain.

Even where work-relatedness is admitted, as was the case of silicosis amongst Swedish metal workers in the post-war period, the immediate response was to begin monitoring workers rather than to engage in prevention. Annette Thörnquist provides a political economic analysis of unequal power relations between workers and employers to explain why authorities chose this route, rather than regulating exposure, which is under the control of the employer, in the process legitimizing the continued exposure of workers to silica. She speculates that an effective response might also have been impeded by the Swedish model of industrial relations, which emphasizes union-management co-operation and self-regulation in a heavily centralized collective bargaining environment.

When the Pemberton Mills building collapsed in Massachusetts in 1860 killing over 100 workers, mainly women and girls, and injuring many more, response was separated from recognition. While the event was readily labeled a disaster by the press and community, and a disaster relief fund was established, there was no response targeting either the insufficient regulatory apparatus of the state, nor the negligient employer. Patricia Reeve notes that a lack of an organized labour movement of mill workers and community was partially to blame. Unfortunately, the nature of the response actually undercut the self-respect and confidence of workers, as repeated narratives of employer avarice and negligence produced an image of employee susceptibility – indeed helplessness – raising doubts about the fitness of workers to participate in social and political life because of their vulnerability and lack of independence.

Even where a working disaster is recognized, response may be short-lived. David Whyte explains how public reaction to the 1988 North Sea Piper Alpha disaster that killed 176 momentarily disrupted the 'self-regulatory' approach that had become dominant in a 'hot' British economy fueled by an oil boom. Costly preventive controls were introduced, but as soon as attention died, the oil industry mounted a campaign that led to a loosening of regulatory controls combined with an intensification of the work process. British legislators accepted the industry's arguments that it needed to become more 'efficient' to survive.

Three chapters examine the 1992 Westray Mine explosion that killed 26 miners in Nova Scotia, and led to a series of public enquiries, reviews, criminal prosecutions, and civil litigation that severely impugned the legitimacy of the province's Occupational Health and Safety regime. Fourteen years later, however, not a single individual or organization had been held legally accountable despite clear evidence of blatant disregard for safety by the company and the complete failure of the inspectorate. In the end, public inquiries reaffirmed a model of occupational health and safety based on internal responsibility that could have been in severe jeopardy.

Richard Johnstone and Eric Tucker show that when a disaster disrupts people's unreflective acceptance of dominant social and productive relations, inquiries can have the effect of reconstructing the event in such a way as to reassure the public that nothing is fundamentally wrong, i.e. that everything possible (and practical) is being done to prevent future disasters. Even criminal prosecution, by decontextualizing and individualizing events, can serve to legitimate inadequate health and safety management and regulation by creating the impression that there are only a few 'bad apples' in an otherwise healthy box. Susan Dodd traces the evolution of explanations produced by official enquiries into the long string of coal mine disasters in Nova Scotia, to show how each drew attention away from the responsibility of both the employer and the state.

This book performs a truly valuable service in drawing attention to the political nature of responses to death and injury in the workplace. Whether an incident is classified as a disaster is of secondary importance, however; the book's major contribution is to provide a political economy of occupational health and safety generally, as well as the closely related field of workers' compensation.

In Canada, as in most of the industrialized world, information on work-related injury, disease, or death is heavily dependent on recognition by Workers' Compensation Boards. Only when they recognize cases as 'arising out of and in the course of employment,' amongst other criteria, do they gain reality as a work-related disease, injury, or death. In this way, WCBS play a key role in shaping the social constructions that normalize and legitimize death and injury in our workplaces,in addition to removing them from the criminal sphere in which they could be treated as the outcome of assaults. One has only to examine the decisions of case managers, appeal tribunals, and courts to appreciate the latitude that is enjoyed by WCBS, and to appreciate the significance of Tucker's book.

Had this book devoted more space to the more mundane world of occupational health and safety, it might have drawn even more attention to the role that trade unions play in all of this, as it is in their daily scrimmages with management and state authorities that trade unions challenge the monopoly which employers, their managers, and public administrators would otherwise enjoy in deciding what is work-related, and therefore requiring response. The breakthroughs that trade unions were able to make into the joint administration of the workplace in the 1970's and 80's marked the height of this movement in Canada, as even nonunion workplaces enjoyed a degree of representation in joint workplace occupational health and safety committees.

Across North America, Europe, and in other parts of the world, trade unions took action in their workplaces and communities, sponsored studies, and took part in commissions of inquiry to shape countervailing explanations of workplace injury and death that forced states and employers to respond. By not giving the trade union movement the attention it deserves, some readers might be left with the notion that the solution for workers facing death and injury in the workplace lies in an outraged public, a vigilant press, concerned legislators, or even in academia. These certainly play a role, but more often do not escape the effect of unequal power relations in society. Workers' health and safety concerns are primarily recognized and effective responses are won when unions are in a position to challenge the power of employers, or when progressive forces, including sympathetic academics, coalesce to form political alliances that compel employers and the state to make needed changes. In the end, this is the conclusion that Working Disasters demands.


WINSTON GERELUK Athabasca University

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