ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines some of the characteristic features of change and their consequences for occupational health and safety (OHS) evident in developed western countries today. It addresses some of the issues that have contributed to causing or exacerbating emerging epidemics in OHS in advanced market economies, as well as considering policies aimed at their prevention and amelioration. However, one of the more obvious aspects of economic and political trends that have reshaped the world of work has been the decline in membership and influence of trade unions in most advanced market economies. Globalization of markets, production, and capital, its consequences for the structure and organization of work and the labor market, and the representation of labor, for states and for whole societies, were among the defining features of the closing decades of the 20th century.
