Law for Managers Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Law for Managers - Essay Example The Act operates by enforcing a broad range of regulations by public or government ministries through the use of statutory instruments which since 1974 have given rise to specific provisions for different industries, risks and disciplines. It is against this backdrop that avenues for public supervision were enforced such as the Health and Safety Executive and Health and Safety Commission were set up. To ensure that the provisions of the Act are binding, the state sanctions the use of instruments of coercion such as the imposition of criminal sanctions, fines and prison sentences which can go up to 2 years. Since this Act of UK Parliament is normally abbreviated as HASAWA, HASWA or HSWA 1974, it will be important to sustain the use of HSWA 1974 throughout the discussion, to steer clear of verbiage (Foster, 2010, 275). The development of the law, taking into account the lack of individual liability in other related legislation Dhir (2012, 100) contends that the main factor that trigger ed the creation and passing of HSWA 1974 is the need to protect employees and members of the public from corporate neglect and greed. Particularly, before the ratification of HSWA 1974, work stations and organisations sidestepped the need to protect employees and members of the public and the need to safeguard their safety. ... At the same time, the failure of previous bills to ensure total safety also necessitated the need to have more robust and more comprehensive legislation. Particularly, there has been a successful coordination of efforts to produce the Employed Persons Health and Safety Bill in 1970. Nevertheless, the bill’s failure to address salient issues of workplace safety became more apparent over time. This failure was mainly seen in the Bill chiefly aiming at curtailing the number of deaths and injuries in British factories. For instance, the second provision of this Bill as is enshrined in the Clause 2 (1) (a) places sanctions on the formation of safety representatives and partly, management representatives in factories having more than 100 employees (Kobrin, 2009, 350). Nevertheless, a critical look at this clause leaves one with the knowledge that the representatives could not implement safety measures (Van-Dam, 2011, 231). Secondly, the failure was catapulted by the absence of coope ration between the totality of the workforce and the management. The discord between the two parties greatly affects the appointment of the safety representatives. The same also means that in the event that the safety representatives have been appointed mainly because of the management’s sleight of hand, then it is likely that the safety representatives may cover up for the organisation’s failure to put effective safety measures in place. It is against this backdrop that the National Institute of Industrial Psychology showed cases of consistent failures among companies and work stations to apply well known safety measures on the floor (Muchlinski,