We have got ourselves in a right mess over health & safety in this country. The right wing dismiss practically all safety concerns as just “unnecessary nanny state meddling”. If people die at work then that is just bad luck. These things “happen”. Likewise, there are also people in our great trade union movement, who consider health & safety not to be a “proper” union issue. Yes, they will use it to recruit and wind members up but… “What! work with the bosses? Fill out their forms? Write reports? How will this further the revolution?”
Even pretend left wing journo's such as columnist Simon Jenkins in today’s Sunday Times, unconsciously uses the same arguments that Victorian supporters of Child labour and opposers of the early nineteenth century Factory Safety Acts made. For example “Risk Assessments”, Jenkins describes today as “one of the most useless generators of red tape and maladministration ever invented”, actually save lives and protect people in vulnerable jobs.
Middle class berks such as Simon who live and type, in their protected privileged cloisters, inhabit a world a million miles away from those who actually do real work for a living.
Anyway, as previously posted this week is European Health & Safety Week. Each year there is a different campaign, the 2007 campaign is called ‘Lighten the Load’ and is targeted at supporting employers, workers and safety representatives to prevent musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs – back and muscle injuries). A million workers per year are affected by MSD.
Also on Wednesday it is "National Inspection Day" when all trade union safety representatives are asked to inspect their workplace. So this Wednesday, even if you have not been trained as a safety rep, then at the very least walk around your workplace with your manager looking out say for obvious slip, trip and fall hazards. Better still; also contact your union branch, regional office or the TUC about being trained as a trade union safety rep.
Jenkins can also go walkabout …down the plank!
2 comments:
I guess you must be working in a really dangerous place then John? What exactly do you do for a living? Some really hard toil I guess? Let us know?
Hi Anon
You’re quite right, no; I don’t work in any really dangerous place. As I make clear in my blog in “about me” I am a housing officer in inner East London. While the overwhelming majority of residents are decent ordinary hard working people there is a very small minority who behave in an unacceptable way due to various reasons. Over the years I have been physically assaulted at work, I have also been physically threatened that I would be attacked with weapons, knifes, axes etc, spat at, sworn, even racially abused (interesting experience for a white bloke). I do work alone at times on visits to homes, work closely with the Police, attend raids, also (on occasions) I work at heights, visit construction sites, investigate reports of disturbed asbestos, have found a number of dead bodies in homes, been a Court witnessing officer and evicted racists, thugs, professional gangsters and drug dealers.
Compared to what our troops find themselves up against in Iraq and Afghanistan, then what I do is not at all dangerous or hard toil. But it is not entirely without risk. The key is managing this risk by the use of risk assessments and an effective safety management system
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