Trade unions and occupational health and safety in comparative historical perspective: a comment on South Africa and Britain

In this paper, prepared for a keynote lecture to the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH) conference held in November 2023 in Durban, I explore the historical relationship between trade unions and occupational health and safety, comparing developments in South Africa and the United Kingdom (UK). The focus is on mining and I address the following questions: What impact did trade unions have, what was their relationship to occupational health and safety, and how did this change over time? I first argue the case for the central importance of trade unions and the progressive role they played, historically, in occupational health in the UK as ‘guardians’ of workers’ bodies, critically examining the so-called ‘trade union effect’. I then discuss the distinctive racialised nature of trade unionism in mining in South Africa and the role of the unions in occupational health. The powerful role that the whites-only Transvaal Miners’ Union and the Mine Workers’ Union played in occupational health is examined, and how the labour movement colluded in the tragedy of the silicosis and tuberculosis disaster amongst black miners in the twentieth century. I end the paper with a comment on how the emerging black trade union movement contributed to addressing the occupational health experience of black miners in the 1980s and 1990s.