Joint Health and Safety Committees:The Senior Management Role

In recent years a major theme in the organisational development and change literature has been the need to produce improved models of the change process. A major source of the need for such improved models is the long overdue recognition of the fact that, although pressures for change occur in both union and non‐union establishments, “OD has had little to say about the role of unions and the part they play in OD”. This particular deficiency is especially unsatisfactory in view of the many longstanding examples of union‐management problem solving structures and arrangements, most notably joint health and safety committees. Moreover, the unsatisfactory state of the organisational development and change literature with regard to the position and implications of the union role is likely to become even more acute as a number of commentators have pointed to such joint problem solving structures as being very much the wave of the future.