ABSTRACT
This is a book about two visions. The first is the vision that every worker should finish their employment alive, in good health, and with the same number of limbs, digits or organs that they started with. This is a goal for every shift and for a working life as a whole. Who could possibly disagree with this? The means by which it can be achieved, however, have been increasingly questioned, in the UK and elsewhere, over the last 20 years. Worker health and safety have come to be seen as nice to have but, perhaps, something of a luxury in hard economic times. Looking after a workforce is not an investment in human capital but an overhead cost that reduces margins and business competitiveness. Although it may be difficult to argue against the principle that employment should not be a source of death, disease or disability, the institutions that give effect to this can be challenged. Rules and regulations can be characterized as too prescriptive and disproportionate. Enforcement can be depicted as petty and lacking in common sense. A framework devised for the industrial economy of the 1970s may be ill-adapted to the conditions of the service economy of the early twenty-first century.
