A priority for worker health and safety: Lessons from the British coal mines

Conclusion

Since the mid-1970s occupational health and safety has become a bandwagon attracting a politically diverse audience. The problems are not new; what is new is a rekindled awareness that more than 150 years of industrial experience has yet to ensure for workers a momentum toward, little less the realization of, humanistically acceptable conditions of labor. What is needed is a fundamental reconception of production priorities [61]. That, in turn, bespeaks basic changes in both productive structures and the ideology informing them. How that struggle is to be waged is a policy debate of utmost importance. Strategies short of revolution have emphasized the role of law, the role of unions, and the role of state ownership. British coal miners perceived an improvement in their working environment as the consequences of a struggle launched on all three of these fronts. Their story, however, also highlights the obstacles confronting such a struggle and it begs us to remember the international context in which future strategies must be devised.