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The lack of Public Toilets is both a workplace and public health issue! Unionsafety is dedicated to promoting the fact that CWU’s safety reps are not just active for workplace changes, and certainly not just for Christmas; but are active for their local and wider communities interests too. Whilst some ignore the work they do and see the community aspects of a Union Safety Reps work as ‘irrelevant to CWU members and too wide an area of activity’ The reality is that what benefits our member’s local community, also benefits our members workplace interests. A perfect example of this is in the Dog safety work that our Postal Constituency Area and workplace Safety Reps are already heavily involved with, which benefits our postal and telecom membership and the Union as a whole. One area that has far too long been neglected by employers of those who work outdoors - postal delivery staff and telecoms engineers – is that of the lack of public toilet facilities in this country.
So, now Jamie has decided enough is enough, and has embarked upon a campaign utilising the 38 Degrees petition platform utilising social media, to campaign for major changes across the UK to change the disgraceful situation that public toilets, or rather the lack of, which is the blight of every outdoor worker in the country. Here is the text of his petition, Taking the Piss: Outdoor Workers Need Toilets Too: The Government must make the provision of public toilets a compulsory priority on a well planned and regulated basis.
Why is this important? National and local governments must pilot innovative new ways of financing public toilets, including a “spend a penny” campaign. In recent decades an increasing pressure on local authority budgets has led to the privatisation or closure of many public toilets. Failure to provide adequate public loos also directly hampers some of the UK’s wider public health efforts, such as curbing obesity, and keeping our increasingly elderly population physically active and socially engaged with the community. The increasing decline in public toilets is a threat to health, mobility, and equality.
You can support Jamie’s fight for the adequate provision of public toilets and help highlight it as a both the right of the public and of outdoor workers to have access to publicly available toilets, and make this a public health as well as workplace issue! Click the pic above to sign Jamie’s 38 Degrees petition Source: J McGovern / unionsafety
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Area Safety Rep, Jamie McGovern from the Great Mersey Amal Branch (aka Merseyside & South West Lancs) has long held the view that the lack of public toilet facilities is a disgrace and an important factor in the cause of work related ill-health.