The Effects of Industrial Relations Factors on Health and Safety Conflict

Expansion of the rights of individual workers to refuse unsafe work and to make anonymous health and safety complaints has met with concerns that these rights might be misused so as to increase union bargaining power or to otherwise harass employers. The authors construct a database that merges work refusals and health and safety complaints with collective bargaining schedules, impasses, grievance arbitrations, and bargaining unit characteristics for 10,193 Ontario units in 1988 to determine how frequently these rights were exercised, whether they were more likely to be used during periods when collective agreements were being negotiated, and whether refusals and complaints were associated with other forms of industrial conflict. Although the exercise of these rights was more likely the more adversarial the industrial relations climate, the authors find little evidence that it was used for concerted harassment of employers.