Strategies for Sustainable Business and the Handling of Workers’ Interests: Integrated Management Systems and Worker Participation

Abstract

This article examines the challenges to trade unions related to workers' participation in organizational renewal known as 'sustainable business'. It analyses how integrated management systems involving occupational health and safety (OHS) and environmental issues affect employee participation. The analysis involves two case studies of enterprises that have recently been modernized in terms of employing integrated management systems.Under the general title of 'Developing Workplaces', the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions has increased its commitment to sustainability, which is used as the point of departure for conceptdriven organizational change. However, the article concludes that the so-called 'prime mover' and high-profile environmental and OHS enterprises do not sufficiently take the interests of employees into consideration.

Union Renewal and Workplace Greening — Three Case Studies

“…All three workplaces succeeded in meeting their carbon management targets and so unions can claim association with a successful initiative -important for asserting a continuing role (Bunge et al 1995;Fredriksson and Gaston 1999;Kornbluh et al 1985;Lund 2004). Key goals were also partially met in terms of better informed environmental policymaking.…”

Considering human error in optimizing production and corrective and preventive maintenance policies for manufacturing systems

“…The motivation for this study is the concept of corporate social responsibility as presented elsewhere [30,31]and the fundamental message of the Brundtland Commission on social, economic and environmental integration and the contribution of workers to sustainable development [32]. These studies highlight the importance of seizing opportunities to achieve better integration of occupational safety and day-to-day management of manufacturing processes.…”

International Symposium on Occupational Safety and Hygiene: Proceedings Book of the SHO2019

“…Throughout the following years (1997)(1998)(1999)(2000) several implementation processes were reported generically (Jackson, 1997;Wilkinson and Dale, 1999;Douglas and Glen, 2000) or in specific and different contexts, such as, in the cement industry (Adams and Niehoff, 1997), natural gas industry (Hamzah et al, 1998), railway industry (Chan et al, 1998), steel industry (Weismayr and Pammer, 1999) and pulp and paper industry (Petrini et al, 2000). The following stream of bibliography (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) proposed some integration models in line with concepts closely related with the phenomenon itself, such as, total quality management (Wilkinson and Dale, 2001), corporate sustainability (Asif et al, 2003) and sustainable businesses (Lund, 2004), risk based approach (Labodová, 2004) and safety culture (Walter, 2005). In addition, several integration strategies were outlined by several authors such as Karapetrovic (2002), Matias and Coelho (2002), Mackau (2003) and Shaw (2004).…”