PCP

PRACTICAL TASK

PART I

History of Health and Safety at Work Act

Jane White traces its origins, looks at its achievements and explains why it’s still relevant
today.

The Health and Safety at Work etc Act is a pivotal piece of legislation, and try as
politicians have to pull it apart, it has truly stood the test of time. Countless lives have been
saved and many more workers have been protected from injury and illness because of it. As
we look ahead to its 40th birthday, we see an oft-imitated system that is the envy of the
world.

But this success story, one of triumph of morality over hard-nosed profiteering, cannot be
told without mention of previous generations and the many millions of people whose
experiences brought it about.

It begins in 1800. Imagine that you are six years old and working in a cotton mill. There is
an outbreak of malignant fever, which leaves many around you dead or dying. Physician
Thomas Percival studies this and sends his recommendations to parliament.

ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS

1) WHAT IS HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK?

2) WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF IT?
3) WHO IS THOMAS PERCIVAL?

PART II

History of health and safety

The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802, sometimes known as the Factory Act
1802, places orders upon cotton mill owners with regard to the treatment of apprentices
(mostly children) and sets requirements for mill cleanliness.

Although the act was ineffective in its implementation, it did pave the way for future
factory acts, which would regulate the industry. The factory acts were a series of acts
passed by parliament to limit the number of hours worked by women and children, first in
the textile industry, then later in all industries. This sets the backdrop to the eventual Health
and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Then, in the 1880s, we see the emergence of the production line. Imagine you are now a
factory worker regarded by your well-heeled employer as little more than a component in a
machine. It is consequently a monotonous and inhumane daily existence, which begins and
ends just beyond the factory wall in a back-to-back terrace house without a garden, built
cheaply and unsafely. The co-location of tasks in the process of production has arrived.

PART III

Henry Ford

Next move forward three decades and across the Atlantic, from the Lancashire cotton mills
to Henry Ford’s Detroit automobile plant. It is December 1913, and the eve of the first truly
mechanised war. Your job at your work station is essentially one or two tasks on Ford’s
rudimentary assembly line. Work is centred on repetition, fragmented experience and
forensically monitored output. We begin to see an increasingly sophisticated division of
labour. Perfection of this sequence resulted in the famous Model T Ford car.

Ford’s model of mass production was given its own name: Fordism. But the drive for
increased production speeds resulted in a wide range of stress-related symptoms that
became so familiar they also earned themselves a name: ‘Forditis’.