The politics of developing a national occupational health service in Sweden

This paper considers a document submitted at the European Conference of the International Labour Organisation in which the Swedish unions presented their programme for a national occupational health policy. The term 'health' is becoming increasingly broader. The relationship between health in its widest sense and the environment is becoming more and more apparent while the relationship between the internal workplace environment and the environment outside, the physical and the mental, is becoming all the closer and more complex. In the future the national occupational health service will have to extend its aims to include demands embracing health and job satisfaction in a much wider sense. This implies much greater responsibility from the union representatives. It is thought that an amendment to Sweden's Osha Act will place the occupational health functions in the plant directly under the union.