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Workplace Health: The Injuries of Neoliberalism
Edited by Toni Schofield
School of Behavioural and Community Health Sciences
The University of Sydney
ISBN 0-9750436-4-1
The Coalition's proposed Industrial Relations changes will entrench values, principles and practices of an aggressive new liberalism in Australian workplaces, in both public and private sectors. The working lives of most Australians and the conditions under which they work may be radically altered as a consequence. One of the major but largely unmentioned casualties of IR reforms is their likely injury to workers' health and well-being.
- Dr Toni Schofield, Editor
Workplace Health and Neoliberalism - a call to action
Mounting difficulties in employment injury prevention and management are indicated for workplaces with neoliberal health and safety policies. In fact, emerging research suggests the possibility of an impending occupational health crisis. Major 'reforms' in public management of occupational health and safety, employment injury and fatality and workers' compensation, over the past decade, have encouraged corporate disregard and disrespect for workplace, employee and community health.
This work provides an invaluable update and analysis of neoliberal workplace health legislation, OH&S, workers' compensation and IR case law, 'self regulation' and their HR workplace impacts.
Workplace Health and Neo-liberalism draws on cases and subjects from Australia and the UK:
Structural interventions in the Australian economy and workplace since the 1990s have irrevocably changed the lives of working Australians. Casualized working conditions, holiday & sick leave and rates of pay have resulted from 'de-unionization' and contract employment beyond legislative safety.
A central impact of neoliberal policy has been the retreat by business and governments from ensuring that workplaces do not kill or maim workers. Injury management schemes now also fail to recognize injured workers as citizens with rights to dignified, compassionate and appropriate treatment.
Several articles in this collection identify strategies for addressing the effects of neo-liberal governance and management that involve collective industrial and political action.
A special issue of Health Sociology Review - indexed in
Thomson ISI Science Citation Index/Social Sciences
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