 |
|
|
|
Sneak Preview - To Be Updated  Carl Webb CWU NW Regional Secretary with a Tony Dunbar Painting Following the first CWU NW H&S event which was held in July 2022, CWU Health and Safety Forum in the North West, followed this up with an equally successful event held today, 11th April in Manchester's Mechanics Institute. were some 70 Union Safety Reps and Mental health First Aiders gathered to watch presentations from guest speaker, including from the Union's new national officer, Jamie McGovern, the first ever Health & Safety Policy Officer, Central Services. The above photo shows the moment when speaker Tony Dunbar, CWU member, completed his very emotional and honest presentation detailing his battle with depression with the support of the Union's Mental health First Aider, Jamie McGovern. Tony's paintings help towards his maintaining his daily struggle with his mental health. More details appear later in this news report of the event. In order to make this a second event successful, the North West Region's H&S Forum officers worked with CWU's North West Regional Secretary, Carl Webb to deliver a second excellent conference, unique to the North West and, once again, making it a leader within the CWU on health & safety in supporting the Union's Safety Reps, in their development, and their being pro-active in addressing issues with the employers; and putting health & safety at work at the forefront of the Union's priorities.
There were a number of new USRs present, including Ellie from a tech section of CWU - Union Of Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW) Unionsafety took the opportunity to interview her. It became clear that she sees Health & Safety as a good recruitment tool, and that given the concerns of young people within her industry, she sees it as a major tool to use. Guest speakers for the day, included new MP for Knowsley in Merseyside, Anneliase Midgley and Janet Newsham, Greater Manchester Hazards, Jamie McGovern, CWU National Officer, Miranda and Frieda, Heat Strike, plus Derek Maylor and John Fanagan of Merseyside Asbestos Victims Support Group. Unfortunately, web editor, Chris Ingram had a couple of technical issues which could not be overcome on the day, resulting in a lower quality video recording of the event. Apologies are made on bended knee! For this reason the report below provides audio transcriptions of the videos, where the quality is not up to standard.
Nevertheless, following the day's timetable, here is the record of the day's presentations and audience participation: The event was opened by John McMurray and Mark D Holt, Lead Officer to the CWU North West Heath and Safety Forum. Welcoming the 70 plus Union Safety Reps to the event, John provided details of the day's timetable, including listing the guest speakers, and of course congratulating the North West's own Jamie McGovern to his national role of the first Health & Safety Policy Advisor to the Union's Central Services: "Good morning. For those of you that don't know me, my name's John McMurray. I'll be your chair for this event. You'll have a chance for a bit of networking after lunch. Lunch will be around about 12, so you'll be able to mix with all the reps and swap stories and stuff like that." He then introduced Mark Holt, Health & Safety Lead Officer of the North West Region's Health & Safety Forum:
He detailed the Union's Health & Safety priorities, making a specific point about welfare facilities, or rather the lack of them, for postal workers delivering letters and parcels and telecoms engineers in BT/EE: "Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to the Mechanics today. It's great to see so many of you in attendance. As John said, we've got a packed agenda, some really fantastic speakers, so I'm hoping today I'm not only being informative but empowering for a lot of you. Workplace safety reps, whether they're health and safety or industrial, are the backbone of the CWU. We firmly believe it's the hardest job in this union. The benefits and support you give our members is invaluable, so on behalf of the North West region, I just want to thank you all. Today's been organised by the North West Safety Forum. I just want to explain for a few minutes a little bit more about the regional structure and what the forum actually is and does. The North West Forum is made up of area safety reps and safety cohorts from 16 CWU branches, which would cover Cheshire, Cumbria, Great Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside and the Isle of Man. We haven't got anyone here from the Isle of Man, though, today. We represent members in Royal Mail, BT, Openreach, Post Office, Parcel Force, other telecoms businesses, Santander, O2, Capita, Virgin Media, just to name a few. As a forum, we meet quarterly and we discuss health and safety issues which are affecting our members, but we also discuss how, as a region, we can organise and campaign politically to benefit our members. We also ensure that the CWU takes part in safety events such as Workers' Memorial Day, and we take part in various health and safety consultations across the region." Mark also spoke of the superb work being done on Health & Safety by the Regional Committee and the Forum, and specifically highlighted the support given to the Health & Safety work being done by the CWU's Union Safety Reps and the North West Regions Health & Safety Forum; by Carl Webb, the Regional Secretary. He said: "I'm going to embarrass someone now as well, but days like today, our political campaigning would not be possible without the support we've received from the Regional Secretary, Carl Webb, and the Regional Executive. The CWU is currently looking at restructuring nationally, and part of this they're looking at regional structures. I cannot emphasise enough how lucky we are in the North West to have a Regional Secretary like Carl. The work he does not only to support events like this, but also opens the doors for us politically is second to none, and we've had recent successes in regional campaigns, and these would not be possible without the work Carl does." He added: "We've worked hard regionally on two specific campaigns this year, which are both long-standing national campaigns in the Union. This has been a low-letterbox campaign, and we've been trying to get service-level agreements with North West Police Constabularies to ensure we have a consistent approach across the region when it comes to dog attacks on our members." Mark then gave a potted history of these campaigns and their goals: "The CWU has been campaigning to outlaw low-letterboxes since 1958, believe it or not. Unfortunately, it's never been enshrined into UK or devolved administrations' building standards. The Union has campaigned relentlessly for decades. Dave Joyce and Dave Joyce today have campaigned on this relentlessly, trying to get the government to implement the specifications which are set out in the European Standard, which outlaws all letterboxes, and would enshrine that into the EU or the UK law. The EU standard requires letterboxes to be at a height accessible for postal workers, but not only postal workers. I think a lot of people in this room have probably gone out campaigning for a Labour Party over the years, and believe me, when you're bending down to those letterboxes every single day, it's an absolute nightmare. The EU standard requires letterboxes to be in the middle of the door. For us, that has significantly reduced problems we have in terms of dog attacks, fingers being trapped, back strains caused by excessive and repeatedly bending down to low-letterboxes. With the help of Carl, we met a lot of local councillors and planning teams, and we were kind of making slow progress on the campaign on this, being bounced around from pillar to post. After the general election, though, we saw this as an opportunity really, when we got Labour government to try and make that work for us. So Carl reached out to Annelies Midgley MP, who's joining us today as a guest speaker, to try and push the campaign along. This coincided as well with the man who's sat next to me here, but the great news is that Jamie was successful and employed as the senior CWU national policy advisor on health and safety."
"This has meant that the campaign has got back where it needs to be on a national level, where hopefully we can finally get it enshrined in UK building standards." As per usual, the question of dog attacks and debilitating bites that postal workers have to cope with, remains a clear threat in a daily basis as post men and women go about their work. This also affects Telecoms engineers too, and in the worst case scenarios; dog attacks have been lethal and taken the lives of those who are bitten, and savagely attacked by out of control dogs. Mark highlighted this issue and the progress being made by the CWU to tackle this continueing threat to CWU members on a daily basis: "We've also made significant progress in our second campaign. Elaine Dangleish, who's the ASR for the North Lancashire Cumbria, can't join us today, but her and Terry Johnson, who's the ASR for East Lancashire, along with Carl, have met with Clive Gunshaw, who's the newly elected Police and Crime Commissioner for Lancashire. Significant progress has been made now regarding a service level agreement in Lancashire over dog attacks. The formal words have been exchanged, and at the heart of this agreement, it is key that we get a robust response from the police force when there's been a dog attack on one of our members. Furthermore, the agreement goes further than that by sharing information on dangerous dogs, but also working jointly in communities, something the senior CWU is passionate about. Sadly though, and it's been talked about for two years now, again we've been bounced from pillar to post with Great Manchester. We've made significant progress where we've got delegates from Great Manchester to attend a Merseyside Dog Safety Partnership to see how Merseyside do it, see if we can mirror that in Great Manchester. It's kind of fought on by the wayside. Myself and Carl have chased it up again now with Kate Green, who is the Deputy Mayor and the Head of Great Manchester Police and Crime. We're asking her to reconvene a meeting as quickly as possible due to the lack of movement on the efforts. As I've just said, we have similar agreements already in place in Merseyside, and due to the emerging risks in Wales, which is now the dog attack capital of the UK, the Welsh Government and police are now working with the CWU looking at dog attack prevention and community work. As a union, we're calling on the new Labour Government to toughen up dog control and police enforcement. The numbers are staggering. Over 2,200 postmen and women are attacked and injured by dogs every single year." Mark then spoke of the increasing number of dangerous dogs attacks taking place across the UK: "For the second year running, there's been a 15% increase in dog attacks. We're now averaging 42 dog attacks a week on CWU members. We need the new Government to further strengthen dog controls, police and the CPS to enforce the legislation. We want penalties that fit the crime on the attacks of not only postal workers but also our parcel post members and our B&T members who work in people's homes. Like a lot of our jobs and businesses we work for, the world of work is ever-changing, and that's the same with health and safety. Health and safety is always changing, and we have emerging risks which are new and which will affect our members. We're probably going to talk about them today a little bit with our guest speakers. We as a union, as a safety community, we need to be ready to face these challenges to ensure the health and safety and wellbeing of our members is always a priority. I'm confident as a union we now have the right person in headquarters who can ensure safety is at the heart of everything we do nationally. Looking around this room today also brings me confidence that as a region we can continue to keep our members safe and well at work." Jamie McGovern Prior to taking up his role, Jamie was heavily involved in supporting mental health of CWU members in his Branch and in his wider role as Area Safety Rep, setting up training for those wishing to become Mental Health First Aiders. Working to become a Mental Health First Aider Tutor, Jamie and his colleagues recruited over 500 CWU members into the role, covering nearly every workplace within Royal Mail.
Now in his new role of a national officer, he intends to continue promoting these and other issues within all the CWU's constituencies. He is also keen to ensure that Union Safety Reps across the whole of the CWU, are aware that his role is not confined just to the one constituency, and that he is the 'national' health and safety policy adviser, and therefore is are of responsibility extends into the T&FS as well as the Postal side of the union. Jamie began his presentation thanking everyone for their work as Union Safety Reps and Mental Health First Aiders: " It should be me giving you a round of applause because of the work you do. I mean someone described, I think it might have been Hazard Centre in Manchester, described safety vests as a volunteer army of lifesavers and that's exactly what you are. I mean I will just go back to the pandemic before I start my presentation." Jamie continued by highlighting how the pandemic affected everyone's lives, and how it placed people into a sense of being confined to their own homes and to their own minds. Detached as they were from work colleagues, family and friends, and loved ones. In a clearly emotional memmory, Jamie continued: "I remember the pandemic so well in Merseyside because we had three of the highest infection rates in the UK and I'll never forget the work the local safety reps did in Knowsley, in Wirral, and in Liverpool to keep people safe during the Covid pandemic and I've no doubt those people saved lives because during that time our trained safety reps were leading managers on how to do Covid risk assessments. I was the ADH at Merseyside at the time and we got the Covid compliance team into Knowsley because of a risk assessment that was done by a local rep who took the real challenge on by confronting the managers over a not safe workplace. The Covid compliance team went in and the business were fined but I'll never forget the flack that that local rep took but what she did do is she stood proud, she stood tall and she represented this union and she was just one of hundreds of reps up and down the country keeping people safe during the Covid pandemic and that will never be forgotten by me or others too." Jamie continued, using his slide presentation: So I'm just going to move into a bit of a presentation, tell you a little bit about what the new role is that I'm involved in, a little bit of the emerging risks that we're looking at now and why I think we need to be quite proactive rather than reactive as a union to these emerging risks that are now coming forth. Obviously you can see on there there's a picture of Dave Joyce who left his national position in July of 2024 and obviously it was nine months before I got into the new role as the policy assistant working to the central services department and working to the GS. I think for me though I need to emphasise what a huge person Dave Joyce has been within the CWU and his absolute commitment to the role that he's given over the last you know decades. In fact when I got the role Dave rung me, he was on holiday and he said my phone is always open to you, always ring me and I'll always guide you and support you as best I can. I said to him Dave you're nearly 72, it's about time, it's about time you slow down and he said no I mean it Jamie, he said I am there for you and every single safety that I've there, I'm always there, I'm a listener near and if you ever need me he said you know you ring and make sure people receive that same message, I'm always there, I'm always ready to support people because you look at Dave Joyce it was his life you know and health and safety keep people safe you know and the way he did again during the pandemic saved lives you know so it wouldn't be remiss of me if I didn't mention Dave Joyce and his desire and his commitment to still support even in retirement. What I want to say is when I was at headquarters and I was looking at Dave's old office and one of the team members come around and said there's a few documents for you there to go through and decide whether you want to keep them, archive them or whether they're confidential waste so I said okay he said Dave's put them in his old office. I went in and it was floor to ceiling full of archived documents from everything from asbestos from meeting with governments on dog attacks from some safety campaigns you know from manual handling honestly I mean I will share a picture in the whatsapp groups but it was unbelievable the amount of work that this guy has got through over the years but if anybody needs any archived documents let me know; because they're sitting there in headquarters and very soon they will be put to confidential waste but I say I wouldn't be afraid if I didn't mention Dave Joyce and the work that he's done for us as a union."
!. Climate Change 2. Mental Hesalth 3. Welfare Facilities 4. Workers over 55 FULL REPORT TO FOLLOW OVER NEXT FEW DAYS Tony Dunbar spoke of his life-long fight with depression and how it took him many years to recognise what it was that made his life unbearable one day, just functional the next. He described his mental health in the form of a photograph, taken of him by his ex-wife, of him laying on the steps of a derelict church in an alcoholic stupour. Calling it "the puddle of a man" and a 'Dark Shadow sitting on his right shoulder' daily. "So I went down a well worn path. Alcohol became my drug of choice. And for a while, it was working. It silences the voices in your head, it silences that nagging voice. But, as everybody knows, booze is never the answer.
This is me, after a serious session in a pub. I walked outside, got about 50 yards away, and collapsed unconscious.
Previous to this, I'd walked That photograph comes from my ex-wife making a point to me." Here is Tony's full speech: "I finished the night with a good old-fashioned punch-up. And some of the men got involved in that as well. Now I know that's not everyone's lived experience, but I think that generalisation is not far off the mark of society and the country as a whole in their decades. Nobody spoke about mental health, and it was not the thing for men especially to talk about. And it's still a stool to this day. It was considered a sign of weakness and unmanly. So for years I hid my depression. And keeping it quiet just made things worse. As Bob Dylan once wrote, the times they are a-changing. So what is my personal depression? How has it affected my life? How do I live with and manage it? And can it be cured? I now know I've been depressive all my life. My family at the time just thought I was a very, very nudey kid. Friends, colleagues, managers, bosses, wives, parents, unfortunately this has been true, children, all of them she picked up on very loud, foggy, mixed up moods. Now my first realisation of depression, or my depression, came around 2015-16. So I've lived with it all my life, didn't know what it was, because nobody spoke about it. I was in Sydney, Australia. I crested a hill, I can still see it in my mind's eye now. Crested a hill and before me is the iconic Bondi Beach. I felt nothing. I was just numb. I didn't know why. I'm in the wonderful Australian sunshine, the heat. I've got this vision coming to me, and I've got no feelings at all, I'm just numb to it. That's the moment I thought, this isn't right. I've got to do something about this. So I came home, obviously I went to the doctors. I was diagnosed with clinical depression. I mean, that's a card on the table. I didn't even really know what clinical depression was. So how has it affected my life? It has created havoc and chaos. As I've said, two broken marriages, neither wife suffered with depression, both of them had to live with it, and both eventually had to leave the marriage in order to live a life away from depression. Work. I've had many jobs. I've even had several businesses of my own.
But all those jobs and businesses end in the same way, with me being unable to commit, constant breakdowns, and as I've said, the vast majority of the time, unable to talk about or explain what was going on and what was wrong with me. So life with depression can be very hard, difficult, it's unrelenting when you're in it. So how do you deal with it? How do you get through the day? This takes me back to my first diagnosis, and the doctor said they've got their armory to deal with it. The first protocol, antidepressants. For me, this was the start of a rollercoaster ride. As with any medication, there can be side effects. Some of these medications had terrible adverse effects on me. So not only now are you dealing with depression, you're now dealing with these side effects as well. And I say this because nobody understands this, because you're trying to work and you're trying to live your life, you're suffering with depression, suddenly you've got these weird side effects at times. I mean, one just knocked me out. I was just like a zombie. You're trying to go to work and explain to humanity that you're not exactly aware of your surroundings. It's really strange, the side effects. And what happens then is you go to the doctor, you say, the side effects are doing this to me, you then have to be weaned off the medication, because it's in your system. Just like a drug, any drug, a drug addict. Then you go through six weeks of stepping down the medication to then go on another medication, and unfortunately in my case, again, side effects, weaned off for six weeks, another medication, side effects, weaned off for six weeks, another medication. All the time as this is happening, you're trying to hold down a job, keep your life on track. It's nearly impossible. Therapy, the next step. Now, I do talk about talk. So I went down a well worn path. Alcohol became my drug of choice.And for a while, it was working. It silences the voices in your head, it silences that nagging voice. But, as everybody knows, booze is never the answer. In fact, it makes things ten times worse. And it turned me into what I now call the puddle of a man. And I can introduce you to him there.
As my ex-wife and my son had to come and pick me up off the floor to try and carry me and get me into a car. Looking at me there, I'm unaware of this. That photograph comes from my ex-wife making a point to me. So what have I learned about my depression? After being told time and time and time again by numerous doctors and therapists, stop drinking alcohol. Their reason being, alcohol is a depressant. And it'll only make things worse. And it did. The penny eventually dropped. These people tend to know what they're talking about. Instead of my fellow barflies, who too don't have any qualifications whatsoever on mental health, but tended to have all the answers a few bites in. We had all the answers about mental health cures, how to play football, and how to run the country. So, I talked about the inner voice that I always have. And I say it's a split personality, but I don't suffer from split personality syndrome. I just call it that. We've all got that inner voice inside of us. It's the one that tells us to have that nice big large bag of crisps. The one that tells us to have that cream cake. That voice. My voice doesn't tell me to have cake. It's a totally negative, defeatist and at times very, very dangerous voice. So I've given my inner voice a personality as such. I've made it a living entity. And I go to battle with it every single day. When talking about this in the past, I used to describe it as the shadow of the dark cloud over my right shoulder. It's there. It's always there. I feel it even now. I can't explain that to you. It's there. So how do I deal with it day to day? And this is how I start. One day at a time, I'll go back. I used to live by a numbering system. And the number was degrees to how bad I felt. Whether I was suicidal. Whether I just wasn't going to get out of bed. I couldn't cope and face the world. Then I'd be, some days, I could manage it. I could get up. I could brush my teeth. I could just about get into work. Or there'd be other days where everything was normal. Just, I'm okay. Sounds strange, but that's the way it was. And I numbered them systems. But the problem with that was I used to wake up and go, alright, I'm intent today. And just give up. And I realised that that wasn't the way to be. This is where the therapy came in. Because I had cognitive therapy and I didn't think it was working. But something did start to resonate with me. Personally, I can't say this for everybody, but I had to try and fight back. That's how I've kind of done it. I started to realise I was too passive. Too passive to the shadow. And, as you can see, it took that man there who I kind of don't know registered, I can't even walk around. It took him to make me seriously think about this illness. Seriously think about my life. When I came to the conclusion I had two options. Number one, option, I just leave the planet and go to the box. I go to the six foot piece of ground. Suicide. That's it, you heard it. It's there. Option two, well I'll go back to that first option. I always think I'm lucky. I think to my children. They're just there. I think, if I commit suicide, I destroy their lives. And that anchored me to the planet. That's what's kept me going. So that's option two. Option two, start listening to all the advice I was getting from the medical experts and obviously I chose to. Right, I stopped drinking. That wasn't easy. I started drinking when I was 15 years of age. I remember my dad taking me for my first pint. It was a rite of passage in our family. I'm sure a few people in here have had that. I drank pretty much every day from that day. It was part of my life. So I stopped drinking. I joined a gym. I never thought I'd like a gym, but I do like it. I had a personal trainer. I knew I had to really get away from this. I started eating well. I started to try and concentrate on getting a decent night's sleep all the time. Now these four things, I'm sure everybody in this room has heard about that with depression. It has worked for me. It's only been six months. The shadow is always there and I'm in a battle every single day. But, you know, touch wood, as my brother knows it, I'm six months in and I'm doing alright. I'm certainly nowhere near that level. So is there a cure? And am I cured? No, as I've said, I'm in a battle every single day. We don't really know why some of us suffer severely with depression. Nobody really knows what it's all about. Most modern treatments are to do with the management of the illness. And as I've said, mine's a daily battle with my bothersome friend, the shadow, who lurks constantly over my right shoulder. But I've come to an end. I need to talk about first aid training. That is really important. As Jamie said, it went from a handful to 200 in the North West. That person who sits in front of you and is prepared to listen to you and accept depression is a thing that was one of the best things that ever happened to me. That first conversation with somebody listening to you, it's the most important thing. There's no doubt about that. If anybody hasn't been through the training, I advise you to go through it. It's eye-opening. It's brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant. And once I had opened up the bar, my world started to change. It didn't get there. This is decent. But my world did start to change. People did start to understand and listen to me. I got a decent manager. I had people like Jamie on the side. Yes, my work was adjusted. And he helped me get through an ongoing, daily battle, but I'm still here. Thank you. FULL REPORT OF THE DAY'S EVENTS INNCLUDING SPEAKERS: HEAT STRIKE, MERSEYSIDE ASBESTOS VICTIMS SUPPORFT GROUP, GREATER MANCHESTER HAZARDS, AND MP FOR KNOWSLEY, MERSEYSIDE CHECK BACK 24th APRIL
|
 |
Mark Holt, then spoke, again welcoming the union safety reps present from both the union's constituencies of Postal and Telecoms and Financial Services (T&FS) and the Postal Constituency.
Mark ended this part of his speech saying:
Jamie's other major issue that he has shown great passion for is that of addressing the situation, as mentioned by Mark, of the increasing number of dangerous dogs incidents, causing injuries, and even deaths.
Jamie went into detail of what he sees as CWU wide risks to our membeers:
In fact, it makes things ten times worse. And it turned me into what I now call the puddle of a man. And I can introduce you to him there. 
This is me, after a serious session in a pub. I walked outside, got about 50 yards away, and collapsed unconscious. Previous to this, I'd walked outside, fell over, broke one collarbone. A couple months later, I walked outside, fell over, broke the other collarbone, and broke my left shoulder as well. All was driven, driven by depression. That is my lowest point though.