The Role Dilemma of Safety Representatives in the UK Oil and Gas Industry

Abstract

The tension is noted between trade union activism and involvement in employee participation schemes. It is shown why, in the United Kingdom's offshore oil and gas industry, a participation scheme—the safety representative system—may be expected to promote union activism in an industry which has resisted union encroachment. It is explained why and how safety representatives have, nevertheless, tended to deny unions a role in the system by reference to the conditions in which representatives acquire their definition of their function. This leads to a categorization of safety representative motivation and role performance and a clarification of how those definitions which associate the representative with management functions rather than union activism receive institutional support.