Skip to main content

The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada: Select Bibliography

The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada
Select Bibliography

  • Show the following:

    Annotations
    Resources

  • Adjust appearance:

    Font
    Font style
    Color Scheme
    Light
    Dark
    Annotation contrast
    Low
    High
    Margins
  • Search within:
    • Notifications
    • Privacy
  • Project HomePolitical Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada
  • Learn more about Manifold

Notes

table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Acknowledgements
  3. Introduction
    1. Perspectives on workplace injury
    2. Purpose of this book
    3. Preventing workplace injury
    4. Compensating workplace injury
    5. Major conclusions
  4. Part One. Employment Relationships in Canada
    1. Employment in a capitalist economy
    2. The labour market and the wage-rate bargain
    3. The labour process and the wage-effort bargain
    4. Power and rules in employment
    5. The common law
    6. Changing definitions of work
    7. Workplace safety and the profit motive
    8. Compensation through the courts
    9. Alternatives to litigation
    10. Do employers intentionally transfer costs?
    11. Conclusion
  5. Part Two. Preventing Workplace Injury
    1. Development of occupational health and safety in Canada
      1. Perspectives on risk
      2. Market model of occupational health and safety
      3. Inevitability and the careless worker
      4. The social construction of accidents
      5. Pressure for state regulation
      6. The Factory Acts
      7. Injury compensation
      8. Why workers’ compensation?
      9. Partial self-regulation
      10. Hoggs Hollow and Elliot Lake
      11. The external responsibility system
      12. The internal responsibility system
    2. Canada’s OHS system today
      1. Duties and obligations
      2. Health and safety standards
      3. External responsibility system
      4. Internal system and the three rights
      5. Partnership model and incentives
    3. Conclusion
  6. Part Three. Critique of OHS in Canada
    1. Recognizing injury and hazards
      1. How many injuries?
      2. Who gets hurt affects injury recognition
      3. The type of injury and its cost also affect recognition
      4. Employers may impede injury recognition
      5. The social construction of injury and hazards
      6. Employer tactics in contesting injury recognition
      7. Perpetuating the careless worker myth
      8. Identifying occupational cancer
      9. Preventing occupational cancer
      10. Constructing cancer as a non-issue
      11. Conceptual models of injury
      12. Limits to the biomedical model
    2. Regulating workplace hazards
      1. Approaches to regulation
      2. Limits on regulation
      3. The internal responsibility system
      4. Knowledge is power?
      5. Joint health and safety committees
      6. The right to refuse
      7. Employer responses to refusals
      8. Refusal as a weak right
      9. Effectiveness of the internal system
      10. Exposure levels and threshold limit values
      11. Are exposure levels safe?
      12. Why do exposure levels always go down?
      13. Inspections and inspectors
      14. Bias in inspections
      15. The effect of orders
      16. Prosecution and fines
      17. Partnerships and the mantra of “safety pays”
      18. Creating evidence of safe workplaces
      19. Disabling injury rate and severity
      20. Measures as conceptual technologies
      21. Why use inadequate measures?
    3. Conclusion
  7. Part Four. Political Economy of Preventing Workplace Injury
    1. Why regulate ineffectively?
      1. Context of state action
      2. Regulation of workplace injury
      3. Inadequate standards
      4. Regulation of hazards in the workplace
      5. Ignorant and reckless?
      6. Social sanction of workplace injury
      7. Ineffective penalties
      8. Why regulate ineffectively?
      9. How is this legitimized?
    2. Injury in the new economy
      1. Work intensification
      2. Precarious employment increases risks
      3. What do intensification and precarious employment tell us?
    3. Conclusion
  8. Part Five. Compensation of Workplace Injury
    1. Workers’ compensation in Canada
      1. Overview of workers’ compensation
      2. Development of workers’ compensation in Canada
      3. Workers’ compensation as a compromise
    2. Injury recognition revisited
      1. Determining compensability
      2. “Arises and occurs”
      3. Balance of probabilities and presumptions
      4. Politics of injury recognition
      5. Work-related musculoskeletal disorders and causation
      6. Occupational diseases
      7. Limiting liability: Psychological injuries
      8. Chronic pain syndrome
    3. Conclusion
  9. Part Six. Worker Benefits and Claims Management
    1. Earnings-loss benefits
      1. Deeming earnings
      2. Permanent disabilities and the dual-award system
    2. Other benefits
      1. Vocational rehabilitation and early return to work
      2. Is early return to work a good idea?
      3. The political economy of ERTW
      4. Medical services
      5. Fatalities
    3. Funding workers’ compensation
      1. Employer premiums
      2. Rising premiums
      3. Moral hazard
      4. Experience-rating schemes
      5. Effect of experience rating on injury frequency
      6. Effect of experience rating on injury duration
      7. Rationale for experience rating
    4. Conclusion
  10. Part Seven. Managing Workers via Injury Compensation
    1. Claim adjudication and administration
      1. Impeding a shared understanding
      2. Mobilizing workers
      3. Role of trade unions
    2. Appeals
      1. Internal reviews and external appeals
      2. How appeal processes advantage employers
      3. Adversarialism in appeals
      4. Political economy of appeals
      5. Impact on workers
    3. Privatization and abolishment
      1. Argument for returning to tort
      2. Operation of tort-based compensation
      3. Comparing tort and workers’ compensation
      4. Privatization
      5. Impact of privatization
      6. Who chooses the insurer?
      7. Cost savings under privatization
      8. Economic globalization as an explanation
      9. Managing worker demands
    4. Precarious employment
      1. Precarious work
      2. Precarious work and worker-related injuries
      3. Precarious work and workers’ compensation
      4. Implications of precarious work for workers’ compensation
    5. Conclusion
  11. Part Eight. Conclusion
    1. Why are workers injured on the job?
    2. Why don’t government injury-prevention efforts work?
    3. Do governments actually prioritize profit over safety?
    4. Why don’t workers call “hooey” on this approach?
    5. Can workers protect themselves?
    6. Do safety incentives reduce injuries?
    7. But how does government legitimize prioritizing profit over safety?
    8. Who benefits from injury compensation? And how?
    9. How does compensation legitimize limiting employer liability?
    10. Occupational disease as a microcosm
    11. So what?
    12. Are workers our most valuable resource?
    13. Is there really no such thing as an accident?
    14. The political economy of workplace injury
  12. Notes
  13. Select Bibliography
  14. Index

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aldrich, M. Safety First: Technology, Labor and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870–1939. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Armstrong, H. Blood on the Coal: The Origins and Future of New Zealand’s Accident Compensation Scheme. Wellington: Trade Union History Project, 2008.

Babcock, R. “Blood on the Factory Floor: The Workers’ Compensation Movement in Canada and the United States.” In Social Fabric or Patchwork Quilt: The development of social policy in Canada, edited by R. Blake and J. Keshan, 45–58. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2006.

Bohme, S., J. Zorabedian, and D. Egilman. “Maximizing Profit and Endangering Health: Corporate Strategies to Avoid Litigation and Regulation,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 11(6) (2005): 338–348.

Breslin, C., P. Smith, M. Koehoorn, and H. Lee, “Is the Workplace Becoming Safer?,” Perspectives on Labour and Income 18(3) (2006): 36–42.

Brophy, J., M. Keith, and J. Schieman. “Canada’s Asbestos Legacy at Home and Abroad,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 13 (2007): 235–242.

Cutler, T., and P. James. “Does Safety Pay? A Critical Account of the Health and Safety Executive Document: ‘The Cost of Accidents’,” Work, Employment and Society 10(4) (1996): 755–765.

Davis, D. The Secret History of the War on Cancer. New York: Basic Books, 2007.

Dembe, A. Occupation and Disease: How Social Factors Affect the Conception of Work-Related Disorders. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Drache, D., and H. Glasbeek. The Changing Workplace: Reshaping Canada’s Industrial Relations System. Toronto: Lorimer, 1992.

Eakin, J. “The Discourse of Abuse in Return to Work: A Hidden Epidemic of Suffering.” In Occupational Health and Safety: International Influences and the New Epidemics, eds. C. Peterson and C. Mayhew, 159–174. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing, 2005.

Epstein, S. The Politics of Cancer Revisited. USA: East Ridge Press, 1998.

Fidler, R. “The Occupational Health and Safety Act and the Internal Responsibility System,” Osgood Hall Law Journal 24(2) (1985): 315–352.

Firth, M., J. Brophy, and M. Keith, Workplace Roulette: Gambling with Cancer. Toronto: Between the Lines, 1997.

Glasbeek, H., and Tucker, E. “Death by consensus at Westray.” In The Westray Chronicles: A Case Study in Corporate Crime, edited by C. McCormick, 71–96. Halifax: Fernwood, 1999.

Gray, G. “A Socio-legal Ethnography of the Right to Refuse Dangerous Work,” Studies in Law, Politics and Society 24 (2002): 133–169.

—. “The Regulation of Corporate Violations: Punishment, Compliance, and the Blurring of Responsibility,” British Journal of Criminology 46(5) (2006): 875–892.

—. “The Responsibilization Strategy of Health and Safety: Neoliberalism and the Reconfiguration of Individual Responsibility for Risk,” British Journal of Criminology 49(3) (2009): 326–342.

Haddow, R., and T. Klassen. Partisanship, Globalization and Canadian Labour Market Policy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

Hall, A., A. Forrest, A. Sears, and N. Carlan. “Making a Difference: Knowledge Activism and Worker Representation in Joint OHS Committees,” Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations 64(3) (2006): 408–436.

Hyman, R. The Political Economy of Industrial Relations: Theory and Practice in a Cold Climate. MacMillan: Wiltshire, 1989.

Ison, T. “The Significance of Experience Rating,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 24(4) 1986): 723–742.

—.“Recognition of Occupational Disease in Workers’Compensation.” Paper presented at the CCOHS Conference on the Recognition and Prevention of Occupational Disease, Toronto, Canada, March 3–4, 2005.

Kaminski, M. “Unintended Consequences: Organizational Practices and their Impact on Workplace Safety and Productivity,” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 6(2) (2001): 127–138.

Kome, P. Wounded Workers: The Politics of Musculoskeletal Injuries. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

Lewchuck, W., M. Clarke, and A. de Wolff. “Working without Commitments: Precarious Employment and Health,” Work, Employment and Society 22(3) (2008): 387–406.

Lippel, K. “Therapeutic and Anti-therapeutic Consequences of Workers’ Compensation,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 22(5–6) (1999a): 521–546.

—. “Workers Describe the Effect of the Workers’ Compensation Process on their Health: A Quebec Study,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 30 (2007): 427–443.

—. “Workers’ Compensation and Controversial Illnesses.” In Contesting Illness: Process and Practices, edited by P. Moss and K. Teghtsoonian, 47–68. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008.

MacEachen, E., S. Ferrier, A. Kosny, and L. Chambers. “A Deliberation on ‘Hurt versus Harm’ in Early-Return-to-Work Policy,” Policy and Practice in Health and Safety 5(2) (2007): 41–62.

McCluskey, M. “The Illusion of Efficiency in Workers’ Compensation Reform,” Rutgers Law Journal 50(3) (1998): 657–856.

Mehri, D. “The Darker Side of Lean: An Insider’s Perspective on the Realities of the Toyota Production System,” Academy of Management Perspectives May (2006): 21–42.

Messing, K. One-Eyed Science: Occupational Health and Women Workers. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.

Mogensen, V., ed. Worker Safety Under Siege: Labor, Capital and the Politics of Workplace Safety in a Deregulated World. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2006.

Nelkin, D., ed. The Language of Risk: Conflicting Perspectives on Occupational Health. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1985.

Quinlan, M., and C. Mayhew. “Precarious Employment and Workers’ Compensation,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 22(5–6) (1999): 491–520.

—. C. Mayhew and P. Bohle, “The Global Expansion of Precarious Employment, Work Disorganisation, and Consequences for Occupational Health: A Review of Recent Research,” International Journal of Health Services 31(2) (2001a): 335–414.

—. C. Mayhew and P. Bohle. “The Global Expansion of Precarious Employment, Work Disorganisation and Occupational Health: Placing the Debate in a Comparative Historical Context,” International Journal of Health Services 31(3) (2001): 507–536.

Roach, S., and S. Rappaport. “But They Are Not Thresholds: A Critical Analysis of the Documentation of Threshold Limit Values,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 17 (1990): 728–753.

Roberts-Yates, C. “The Concerns and Issues of Injured Workers in Relation to Claims/Injury Management and Rehabilitation: The Need for New Operational Frameworks,” Disability and Rehabilitation 25(16) (2003): 898–907.

Robinson, J. Toil and Toxins: Workplace Struggles and Political Strategies for Occupational Health. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Rosner, D., and G. Markowitz, eds. Dying for a Living: Workers’ Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.

Sass, R. “The Limits of Workplace Health and Safety Reforms in Liberal Economics,” New Solutions 3(1) (1992): 31–40.

Sharpe, A., and J. Hardt. Five Deaths a Day: Workplace Fatalities in Canada, 1992–2005. Ottawa: Centre for the Study of Living Standards, 2006.

Smith, D. Consulted to Death: How Canada’s Workplace Health and Safety System Fails Workers. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring, 2000.

Storey, R. “From the Environment to the Workplace… and Back Again? Occupational Health and Safety Activism in Ontario, 1970s−2000+”, Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 41(4) (2004): 419–447.

—. “Their Only Power was Moral: The Injured Workers’ Movement in Toronto,” Histoire sociale-social history 41(81) (2008): 99–131.

Storey, R., and W. Lewchuk. “From Dust to DUST to Dust: Asbestos and the Struggle for Worker Health and Safety at Bendix Automotive,” Labour/Le Travail (45) (2000): 103–140.

Thomason, T., T. Schmidle, and J. Burton. Workers’ Compensation: Benefits, Costs and Safety under Alternative Insurance Arrangements. Kalamazoo: Updike Institute, 2001.

Tompa, E., S. Trevithick, and C. McLeod. “Systematic Review of the Prevention Incentives of Insurance and Regulatory Mechanisms for Occupational Health and Safety,” Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health 33(2) (2007): 85–95.

Tucker, E. “The determination of occupational health and safety standards in Ontario, 1860–1982,” McGill Law Journal 29 (1983/84): 260–311.

—. “Making the Workplace ‘Safe’ in Capitalism,” Labour/Le Travail 21 (1988): 45–85.

—. Administering Danger in the Workplace: The Law and Politics of Occupational Health and Safety Regulation in Ontario, 1850–1914. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.

—. “And the Defeat Goes on: An Assessment of Third-Wave Health and Safety Regulation,” in Corporate Crime: Contemporary Debates, edited by F. Pearce, 245–267. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.

—, ed. Working Disasters: The Politics of Response and Recognition. Amityville: Baywood Publishing, 2006.

Vosko, L., ed. Precarious Employment: Understanding Labour Market Insecurity in Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006.

Walters, V. “Occupational health and safety legislation in Ontario: An analysis of its origins and content,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 20(4) (1983): 413–434.

—.“The Politics of Occupational Health and Safety: Interviews with Workers’ Health and Safety Representatives and Company Doctors,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 22(1) (1985): 57–79.

Walters, V., and M. Denton. “Workers’ Knowledge of their Legal Rights and Resistance to Hazardous Work,” Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations 45(3) (1990): 531–547.

Walters, V., W. Lewchuk, J. Richardson, L. Moran, T. Haines, and D. Verma. “Judgments of Legitimacy Regarding Occupational Health and Safety: Regulating capitalism.” In Corporate Crime: Contemporary Debates, ed. F. Pearce, 284–303. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.

Witt, J. The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows and the Remaking of American Law. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Yates, M. Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003.

Ziem, G., and B. Castleman. “Threshold Limit Values: Historical Perspectives and Current Practice.” In Illness and the Environment, eds. S. Kroll-Smith, P. Brown, and V. Gunter, 120–134. New York: New York University Press, 2000.

Annotate

Next Chapter
Index
PreviousNext
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CA). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.
Powered by Manifold Scholarship. Learn more at
Opens in new tab or windowmanifoldapp.org