Strategies for Sustainable Business and the Handling of Workers’ Interests: Integrated Management Systems and Worker Participation

This article examines the challenges to trade unions related to workers’ participation in organizational renewal known as ‘sustainable business’. It analyses how integrated management systems involving occupational health and safety (OHS) and environmental issues affect employee participation. The analysis involves two case studies of enterprises that have recently been modernized in terms of employing integrated management systems. Under the general title of ‘Developing Workplaces’, the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions has increased its commitment to sustainability, which is used as the point of departure for concept-driven organizational change. However, the article concludes that the so-called ‘prime mover’ and high-profile environmental and OHS enterprises do not sufficiently take the interests of employees into consideration.