Clutterbuck R C
Int J Health Serv. 1980;10(1):149-60. doi: 10.2190/LP2D-J4AX-Y169-2VKL.
Recent health and safety legislation in the United Kingdom comes at a time of economic crisis. The only way of understanding its impact is to look back at the roles of employers, the State, trade unions, workers, and the medical establishment over the past 150 years since the rise of industrial capital. In many ways, issues that were current at the turn of the century--such as the conflict between profits and health, whether to clean up the production process or insulate workers from its hazards, compensation, and employers' liability--are still very much present today, although these issues are often obscured by the notions that there is an identity of interest between management and workers over health and safety and that profits and safety go together. The role of the trade unions in dealing with existing and new hazards of production has historically been ambiguous, yet the need for them to develop an overall policy of prevention has always been obvious. Although they are now part of the governing apparatus, other arms of the State--in particular the civil service--initiate changes in health and safety organization, while trade unions make sure they are enacted. The development of trade-union area health and safety groups represents the most important potential change and may well provide the necessary focus for information and organization to cut through the "concerned" propaganda from management and its safety committees and start the long-awaited cleanup of industry.
英国近期出台的健康与安全法规正值经济危机时期。理解其影响的唯一途径是回顾自工业资本兴起以来的过去150年里雇主、国家、工会、工人以及医疗机构所扮演的角色。在许多方面，世纪之交时出现的问题——比如利润与健康之间的冲突、是清理生产过程还是让工人免受其危害、赔偿以及雇主责任等——如今依然十分突出，尽管这些问题常常被以下观念所掩盖，即管理层与工人在健康与安全方面利益一致，利润与安全可以兼得。从历史角度看，工会在应对现有及新出现的生产危害方面的作用一直模糊不清，然而它们制定全面预防政策的必要性却始终显而易见。尽管工会如今是管理机构的一部分，但国家的其他部门——尤其是公务员队伍——发起健康与安全组织方面的变革，而工会则确保这些变革得以实施。工会地区健康与安全小组的发展代表着最重要的潜在变化，很可能为信息收集和组织工作提供必要的焦点，从而戳穿管理层及其安全委员会的“关切”宣传，并开启期待已久的工业清理行动。
