Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis paper reflects on the ways in which public labor history and more populist forms of public history have intersected and/or diverged in Australia since the 1970s. By comparing various labor heritage programs and public history interpretation strategies at four redeveloped industrial heritage sites, it examines how both approaches have conceived and represented workers' history and the relationship between past and present, industrialization and deindustrialization. Drawing on the concepts of "nostalgia" and "nostophobia," the paper suggests that in Australia, labor history/heritage and public history are fundamentally at odds as a result of different political and economic imperatives and the recognition given to workers' collective traditions.

For the most part, the extensive literature produced on joint labour—management safety committees since the 1970s has neglected historical antecedents. To provide insights from the past, this article focuses on America's early 20th-century Safety First Movement, which sought to reduce accidents through the adoption of non-union safety committees and re-engineering techniques, based on various aspects of scientific management. By assessing the relationship between these `soft' and `hard' dimensions of Safety First, this article demonstrates that the two were united in practical terms not only in the US but also in Britain and Australia. This fusion, it is argued, provided a means of obtaining workers' consent for organizational and workplace changes and overcoming prevailing resistance to the methods associated with scientific management. In doing so, it emphasizes the value of focusing on management goals and anticipated consequences of employee participation and representation.