A Conversation about the Work Environment

Abstract

The author looks at work environment matters from the perspective of public policy-making and the policy instruments used to deal with workplace health and safety: standard setting; joint health and safety committees; compliance, enforcement, and prosecution; workers' compensation as an economic incentive; and collective bargaining. While regarding all as necessary, the author considers them as separately and collectively, fundamentally flawed and therefore insufficient, because liberal public policy-making itself is problematic. He proposes an alternative way of thinking about this subject from the perspective of the “politics of meaning.”