Worker Representation in the Regulation of Occupational Health: Explaining the Shift to Knowledge Activism

Abstract

This paper explains the origins, features and impacts of ‘knowledge activism’ as an emergent form of collective OHS resistance. Coupling labour process theory with Pierre Bourdieu‘s concepts of capital, the analysis connects transformations in production, management, technology, and neoliberal governance to shifts in labour/management power relations, both within the joint committee and the workplace more generally, as defined by the relative social, cultural and symbolic capital accumulated and mobilized by worker representatives.