Historical and Contemporary Challenges to Occupational Safety and Health in Latvia

Abstract

Abstract This paper addresses the historical and contemporary challenges created for occupational safety and health in the EU member state of Latvia, which joined the European Union in 2004. It examines the historical background for the determinants of workplace health and safety in Latvia as a former Soviet republic, and thereafter, following independence from the USSR in 1991, as an open-market neoliberal economy. These divergent contexts have set a problematic trajectory of reactive path dependency with respect to the regulation of occupational safety and health.