Muted Support For Health And Safety Action Week

Despite the coalition governments aim of wiping out not only employment protection, but also that of the health, safety and welfare of the UK's 15 million workers, little support has been given to the The Trade Union Co-ordinating Group's Health And safety Week of Action.

The Trade Union Co-ordinating Group (TUCG) brings together nine national unions (BFAWU, FBU, NAPO, NUJ, PCS, POA, RMT, UCU and URTU) to co-ordinate campaigning activities.

With a rally being called in Liverpool on 3rd March and a lobby of parliament the previous day, the opportunity was there to give major publicity to the fact that this government's plans for health and safety will see the introduction of an american style business free for all, and subsequent increase in deaths and injuries to people whilst at work.

However, only 12 people turned up in Liverpool to hear Hilda Palmer from campaigning group Hazards condemn the coalition governments stance on health and safety and present the cold facts with regard to the annual appalling loss of life and injury amongst the UK's workforce.

Using the Hazards key campaign, We didn't Vote to Die at Work, Hilda exploded the myths of the employers organisations argument that current health and safety legislation is a burden on business and who really pays the price for health and safety crimes. She also used campaign group, Families Against Corporate Killers cases to illustrate the real harm of work, in terms of workplace injuries and deaths that currently blight the UK's working environment.

Hilda was also a speaker at the organised lobby of parliament the previous day on wednesday 2nd March at which 100 people attended a meeting in Committee Room 14 and lobbied their MPs, whilst 100 additional people attended the rally at 2 pm that afternoon.

Using the same arguments as in the Liverpool rally, Hilda raised the issues and debunked the myths around health and safety of the UK's workplaces.

Hilda said,

" No-one voted for the slashing of the most basic right: to go to work safely and without risk to short or long term health, and to come home alive and undamaged to your family at the end of the day. The government rationale for cutting of health and safety protection is based on lies, apocryphal stories and straw man arguments set up by David Cameron, Lord Young and the business lobby, based on tabloid headlines not on facts, evidence or reality."

She went on then to list the 6 major myths that the government and business pressure groups were using to attack and weaken existing health and safety legislation:

Lie No.1: Health and Safety in Britain is one of best in world and very few people now hurt by work.

TRUTH: up to 1,500 killed in work related incidents up to 50,000 die due to work-related illnesses and millions made ill by work EVERY YEAR; Britain only 30 out of 176 countries for occupational safety and health performance in Maplecroft Risk Index report 2010; we have more occupational ill-health now than ever, according to occupational health experts.

Lie No. 2: Health and safety has gone mad, it’s over the top, over enforced, over bureaucratic.

TRUTH: There’s less regulation now than 40 years ago, less paper work, less time required by employers; less spot inspection of workplaces– only once in 38 years now; less investigations: only 1 in 13 major and fatal injuries even investigated; less prosecutions: down 50% over 10 years and in 98% of major injuries there is no enforcement action taken against the employer at all.

Lie No. 3: Offices, shops, schools are ‘non-hazardous’, no need for health and safety meant for factories.
TRUTH: You’re less likely to be killed or physically injured but these workers face musculo-skeletal risks from working with computers, violence from customers and pupils, and a whole host of stress related illnesses caused by bullying and harassment, by long hours and excessive workloads. Risk assessment is proportionate and takes account of the different hazards in these workplaces.

Lie No. 4: Compensation culture is rife
TRUTH: Less than 10% of workers made ill, injured and the families of those killed by work, get any sort of compensation at all and all reports show claims down except for road traffic incidents.

Lie No 5: Health and safety costs too much

TRUTH: Good health and safety saves employers and state money. Poor health and safety costs at least £30 billion EVERY YEAR and who pays? You do – workers and their families pay in heartbreak and poverty, we/state pay via health and benefit costs but the employers who cause the damage pay less than 25%!

Lie No.6: Health and safety is only common sense, we can do away with laws and enforcement

TRUTH: Workers are made ill and killed every day due to employers failing to manage health and safety. All the evidence shows what works is clear laws, strictly enforced to protect workers from ignorant, non-compliant and often criminally negligent.

Derek Maylor, Chair of the NW BTU Health & Safety Co-ord told Unionsafety,

"It is clear that further publicity and action needs to be given to defend the vital issue of health and safety protection for the UK's 15 million workers, and that the current complacent and fatalistic stance being taken by many within the Trade union movement needs to be addressed.

The public need to be alerted to the true nature of the coalition governments attacks on health and safety, and the only way of doing that is to support in great numbers every opportunity to make publicity around this issue. Failure to do so will result in the UK sleep walking into an american culture of increasing deaths and injuries of workers and misery to their families and friends."

Source: Unionsafety / Hilda Palmer, Hazards Campaign

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