Abstract
Abstract This article tests the extent to which the organization and stringency of occupational health and safety regulation complements the dominant mode of coordination in the political economy. While the UK explicitly sanctions risk-cost-benefit trade-offs, other European countries mandate ambitious safety goals. That contrast appears to reflect cleavages identified in the Varieties of Capitalism literature, which suggests worker protection regimes are stronger in coordinated market economies than in liberal market economies. Our analysis of Germany, France, UK and the Netherlands, shows that the varied organization of their regulatory regimes is explained through a three-way complementarity with their welfare systems and modes of coordination. However, despite varied headline goals, we find no systematic differences in the stringency of those countries’ regulatory protections insofar as they all make trade-offs on safety. Instead, the explicitness, rationalizations and logics of trade-offs vary according to each country’s legal system, state tradition and coupling between regulation and welfare system.
Highlights
In 2007, the UK won a protracted battle with the European Commission (EC) over its explicit framing of occupational health and safety (OHS) regulation as a trade-off between safety and cost
That contrast appears to reflect cleavages identified in the Varieties of Capitalism literature, which suggests worker protection regimes are stronger in coordinated market economies than in liberal market economies
4.1 Organization of OHS Regulation In this first section we describe the organization of the regulatory institutions, processes and actors involved in OHS regulation in order to test the extent to which it complements the dominant modes of firm coordination in our four countries as predicted by Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) theory
Summary
In 2007, the UK won a protracted battle with the European Commission (EC) over its explicit framing of occupational health and safety (OHS) regulation as a trade-off between safety and cost The EC had referred the UK to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), alleging that UK law compromised the goal of European OHS regulation by stipulating that workers should only be protected against harm ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’. The EC—and, European trade unions— argued that this qualification was inconsistent with the Framework Directive’s (89/391/ EEC) absolute duty on employers to ‘ensure the safety and health of workers in every aspect related to the work’. The UK successfully countered, that since it is ‘impossible to eliminate all [workplace] risks’ (HSE, 1989, p.17), it is better to ensure that the cost, time and effort required to reduce risk is not grossly disproportionate to the benefit gained
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