Participation in safety and health in European workplaces: Framing the capture of representation

Abstract

We discuss experience of worker representation in occupational health and safety in the European Union, using findings from a large qualitative study of practices in 143 establishments in seven Member States. This study was a follow-up to the second EU-OSHA European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks. We focus on the experience of the operation of the institutional forms of representation of workers in safety and health and draw attention to the extent to which statutory provisions largely conceived in pluralist industrial relations contexts are currently operationalized in more unitary ones. We discuss the consequences for the model of representation that previous studies have identified to be most effective.