Was health and safety a strike issue? Workers, unions and the body in twentieth-century Scotland
McIvor, Arthur (2017) Was health and safety a strike issue? Workers, unions and the body in twentieth-century Scotland. Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, 8 (2). pp. 5-33. ISSN 1753-2396
Preview |
Text.
Filename: McIvor_JISS_2016_Was_occupational_health_and_safety_a_strike_issue.pdf
Accepted Author Manuscript Download (427kB)| Preview |
Abstract
In February 1949, 5,000 or so asbestos miners downed tools and went on strike in a dispute which centred on excessively dusty working conditions which were considered inimical to the health of those breathing this toxic mineral into their lungs. This occurred in the mining town called Asbestos in Quebec, Canada, where Irish migrants were amongst the strike’s participants. The Catholic Church was drawn into the conflict, with the nearby Archbishop of Montreal supporting the strikers and organising fund-raising which quickly accumulated over $500,000. After a long, bitter and violent five-month struggle the strike was defeated and the men returned to working in the dust. Two decades or so later, in the 1970s, the legacy was evident in uncontroversial medical evidence of spikes in asbestos-related disease deaths amongst Canadian asbestos miners. This episode is revealing because it appears to be such a rare occurrence: a workers’ strike explicitly over occupational health where a substantial number of employees were responding directly to the threat towards their bodies of the labour process, the work environment and the materials on which they worked.
ORCID iDs
McIvor, Arthur ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8907-3182;-
-
Item type: Article ID code: 59672 Dates: DateEvent30 June 2017Published1 December 2016AcceptedSubjects: History General and Old World > Great Britain > Scotland
Social Sciences > Industries. Land use. Labor > Risk ManagementDepartment: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > Humanities > History Depositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 01 Feb 2017 12:52 Last modified: 02 Dec 2024 01:18 Related URLs: URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/59672