History: Exploring the origins of labour rights and worker safety

This section presents a socio-historical review of human ‘labour’.  It outlines foundational knowledge on the intertwined origins of worker labour and safety rights while contextualising the formation and role of unions in securing labour rights that, today, are standard in Australian and New Zealand contexts.  It will enhance your understanding of the historical origins of the contemporary disciplines of Employment Relations and Work Health and Safety (WHS) to explain why, although today treated as separate domains, there are commonly shared assumptions and principles.