CWU Conference Health And Safety Fringe Meeting

It has become a regular feature of CWU Annual General Conference for the Health and Safety Dept to organise a fringe meeting for delgates and USRs attending the conference. Guest speaker's and the opportunity to raise issues and a question and asnwers session over the topic presented by the guest speaker, makes the event very popular with those interested in health and safety at work.

Derek Maylor, Chair of the NW BTU H&S Co-ord reports:

This year's conference Health & Safety fringe meeting was themed on Work Related Stress and Mental Ill Health with guest speaker Ian Draper from the UK National Work Stress Network who addressed over 100 delegates at what is traditionally the conferences largest fringe meeting. 

Ian gave a presentation and update on stress, and the signs of stress, largely discussing the role of the trade union officer and union safety representative. Whilst we are looking after members’ and their workplace role we can miss what is obvious in our own surrounds.

Members can place demands on their representatives at all times of day and depending on work times, also during evenings and weekends. This at the same time as our time is under attack from employers and government. The Coord is on record as having already said that we could head for a perfect storm with the illness of one Safety Coordinator passing on the their work load to another when there is no slack to use; creating a domino effect. 

He advised that we should have separate mobile phones for work and personal calls, be able to switch work mobiles off when not in work and not take work home during weekends and evenings.

Ian closed by announcing that the UK Work Stress Network Annual Conference 2015 will take place at Hillscourt Conference, Centre in Birmingham over the weekend of 28th. & 29th. November entitled "Workplace-Stress - What Cost?". It is estimated that the financial costs of stress in the workplace is almost £700 million a year in wages alone.

Further details are available from www.workstress.net

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