Class, Agency and Action: The Class Distortion in Public Policy Formulation Respecting Worker’s Compensation and the St. Lawrence Fluorspar Mines
This paper will seek to analyze the impact of class relations on the policy making processes from 1949 to 1978 regarding worker’s compensation for the fluorspar mines in St. Lawrence. Using theories of power relations and class, this paper aims to clarify the exact role played by class as a determin...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.660.6544 http://journals.library.mun.ca/ojs/index.php/MP/article/viewFile/230/180/ |
| Summary: | This paper will seek to analyze the impact of class relations on the policy making processes from 1949 to 1978 regarding worker’s compensation for the fluorspar mines in St. Lawrence. Using theories of power relations and class, this paper aims to clarify the exact role played by class as a determinant of policy influence in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland. This paper will focus primarily on the agenda-setting stage of the policy cycle, as this stage is the one that most readily incorporates the interest articulation and interest aggregation that occurs within the policy universe. The theoretical scope and framework will outline class analysis theory, which will then be applied to the fluorspar mines case through examining the key actors and their role in agenda setting. The paper will outline how the class relations characterizing the agenda-setting stage ultimately determined the fate of the policies of worker’s compensation as being consistently inadequate. The legacy of the fluorspar mines in St. Lawrence are known as a great industrial disaster in Newfoundland. There is no doubt that the total lack of mining regulations and standards permitted the workers of St. Lawrence to be blatantly exploited and endangered by the mining company (Leyton, 1975: 1-5). The moral and ethical implications of the public policies influencing the operation of the mine will not be outlined in this paper. While these implications are crucial to understanding the industrial disaster in St. Lawrence, this paper seeks rather to explain how the policy making process itself was inherently unjust based on class inequalities, and therefore the generation of inadequate policy was inevitable. This paper will begin with a theoretical analysis of class dimensions in public policy, and will then apply and interpret the meaning of this theory with regards to the St. Lawrence fluorspar mines and worker’s compensation in particular. |
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