Shiny happy people? UK construction industry health: Priorities, practice and public relations

The UK construction industry is arguably in poor health, rates of occupational illness statistically significantly higher than for workers in any other industry.  Despite growing awareness that the 'slow burn' of occupational health requires alternative management approaches than those made to secure safety, health remains neglected, the reduction of health risks often limited to the 'last resort' provision of Personal Protective Equipment.  Recently, the scope of health management on large sites has actually increased; public health now included within the organisational health management remit, as promoted by the UK Government’s Public Health Responsibility Deal Pledge for Construction and Civil Engineering Industries.  Yet concerns have been raised that prioritisation of public health management will distract from the more challenging problems of occupational health in practice, not least because it so readily provides grist to the Corporate Social Responsibility mill.  Previous work has examined this phenomena from theoretical perspectives, and revealed the relatively limited response of industry as a whole to the Pledge, and here a critical discourse analysis of UK 'construction industry health' has been carried out, using the industry's own representations of its health; organisational websites and Pledge documentation of the top ten UK contractors by yearly work won.  Whilst this presented data may not directly reflect practice, it will reveal the way health is positioned by these organisational identities, through their organisational policies, which will in turn contribute to the development of the wider discourse of 'construction industry health'.  This will explore how 'industry health' inevitably affects, and indeed is affected by, the manoeuvring between public and occupational health, the potential for the attention paid to the former to be detrimental to the latter, and the role CSR plays within this relationship.  More detailed findings are forthcoming.