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Labor and Employment Law

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Selected Works

2015

Industrial safety--Law and legislation

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

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Layers Of Vulnerability In Occupational Health And Safety For Migrant Workers: Case Studies From Canada And The Uk, Eric Tucker, Malcolm Sargeant Feb 2015

Layers Of Vulnerability In Occupational Health And Safety For Migrant Workers: Case Studies From Canada And The Uk, Eric Tucker, Malcolm Sargeant

Eric M. Tucker

No abstract provided.


The Westray Mine Disaster And Its Aftermath: The Politics Of Causation, Eric Tucker Feb 2015

The Westray Mine Disaster And Its Aftermath: The Politics Of Causation, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

Causation analysis is densely political in at least three ways. First, because causation is crucial to our system of attributing moral, legal, and political responsibility, causation arguments are advanced for purely instrumental purposes. They do political work. Second, because any particular occurrence is the outcome of an almost infinite number of antecedent events, “but for” causation analysis produces trivial results. A judgment about causal significance is required and will depend, in part, on the goals of the analysis. The choice of goals is political, but unstated goals and hidden assumptions often exclude consideration of some possible causes as significant. Theses …


Making The Workplace 'Safe' In Capitalism: The Enforcement Of Factory Legislation In Nineteenth Century Ontario, Eric Tucker Feb 2015

Making The Workplace 'Safe' In Capitalism: The Enforcement Of Factory Legislation In Nineteenth Century Ontario, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

The development of industrial capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century in Ontario brought new and more serious hazards into the workplace and drew women and children into the waged labour force. As a result of working class lobbying and the efforts of middle class reformers, the state empowered itself to regulate health and safety conditions in factories and to protect child and female labour. The implementation of these regulations was left to an inspectorate which was armed with substantial legal powers to enforce the law. These powers were rarely invoked by the inspectors. However, the failure to …


Diverging Trends In Worker Health And Safety Protection And Participation In Canada, 1985-2000, Eric Tucker Feb 2015

Diverging Trends In Worker Health And Safety Protection And Participation In Canada, 1985-2000, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

Despite the comprehensiveness of neo-liberal restructuring in Canada, it has not proceeded uniformly in its timing or outcomes across regulatory fields and political jurisdictions. The example of occupational health and safety (OHS) regulation is instructive. This article compares recent OHS developments in five Canadian jurisdictions, Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario and the Federal jurisdiction. It finds that despite the adoption of a common model by all jurisdictions, there has recently been considerable divergence in the way that the elements of worker participation and protection have been combined. Modified power resource theory is used to explain a portion of this …


The Road From Westray: A Predictable Path To Disaster?, Eric Tucker Feb 2015

The Road From Westray: A Predictable Path To Disaster?, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

No abstract provided.


Worker Participation In Health And Safety Regulation: Lessons From Sweden, Eric Tucker Feb 2015

Worker Participation In Health And Safety Regulation: Lessons From Sweden, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

The toll capitalist production takes on the lives and health of workers has been, and continues to be one of its least acceptable features. For this reason, the labour movement and political parties seeking labour's support have often made reform of occupational health and safety regulation a major objective. In recent years, for example, the New Democratic Party in Ontario has vociferously criticized the failures of the governments of the day to protect adequately the workers in the province. Their recent electoral success provides a great opportunity to improve the work environment and to strengthen the ability of the labour …


The Determination Of Occupational Health And Safety Standards In Ontario 1860-1982: From Markets To Politics To...?, Eric Tucker Feb 2015

The Determination Of Occupational Health And Safety Standards In Ontario 1860-1982: From Markets To Politics To...?, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

The author reviews the historical development of the decision-making frameworks within which courts and the Legislature have made choices regarding the allocation of risks to health and safety in the workplace. Arguing that this development has been conditioned by the necessity of satisfying in a capitalist democracy conflicting demands to facilitate capital accumulation and to justify to the electorate the manner in which choices regarding the structure of the processes of production have been made, the author contends that recent pressure to adopt cost-benefit analysis to satisfy the demands of legitimation and accumulation, and challenges its adequacy as a normative …