Lifestyle Plays a Vital Role in Bid to Keep Workers Fit and Healthy; Occupational Health in the Workplace Has Long Been Something of a Cinderella Service. Health Editor Madeleine Brindley Speaks to Dr Sally Williams at Corus' Plant in Port Talbot about How the Discipline Is Now Being Taken Seriously

Byline: Madeleine Brindley

THERE is a common perception that the state-run heavy industries looked after their employees' general health and wellbeing.

This ideal dates back to the heady days of the industrial revolution when a handful of industrialists combined philanthropic ideas with business, in a bid to improve the social and living conditions of their vast armies of workers.

These include the likes of George and Richard Cadbury, who built their chocolate empire in Bournville, in Birmingham, on sound Quaker and social ideals, and Sir Titus Salt, who built more than 800 homes for his mill workers in Saltaire, also in Birmingham.

And then there was the eccentric figure of Dr William Price, one of the forgotten pioneers of health in the workplace - he is remembered first and foremost as the godfather of cremation - who initiated the first workers' medical scheme in Wales for employees of the Brown Lennox chain works, in Pontypridd.

The decades of nationalism would embody a sense of the state looking after its workers - carrying on this …

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Publication information: Article title: Lifestyle Plays a Vital Role in Bid to Keep Workers Fit and Healthy; Occupational Health in the Workplace Has Long Been Something of a Cinderella Service. Health Editor Madeleine Brindley Speaks to Dr Sally Williams at Corus' Plant in Port Talbot about How the Discipline Is Now Being Taken Seriously. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales). Publication date: May 5, 2008. Page number: 24. © 2009 MGN Ltd. COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale Group.

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