"Union reps are good for workers and employers and we can prove it"

Check out TUC risks and link to Stronger Unions response to the latest nonsense from the Tax evaders alliance.

"The TUC has ripped apart the latest attempt by a right-wing lobby group to claim paid release for union reps comes at a cost. TUC national organiser Carl Roper said the annually regurgitated claim by the Taxpayers’ Alliance that union volunteers are a drain on the public purse and taxpayers gets picked up uncritically by sections of the media, despite the irrefutable evidence proving precisely the opposite. 

Writing in the TUC’s Stronger Unions blog, he points to research and government publications showing the union role in the workplace is good for business, the economy and the health of workers. He says this establishes five areas that benefit from the activity of workplace union reps: skills and training; exit rates, labour turnover and dispute resolution; productivity, and worker safety. He said in workplaces where there is direct trade union health and safety representation there were much lower injury rates, translating to between 34,000 and 52,000 fewer working days lost. 

“There are just 170,000 union representatives in the UK amongst a workforce of around 25 million. It would be difficult to find another group of employees who in addition to carrying out their regular job make such a significant contribution to the UK economy as a result of volunteer activity,” Roper concluded. 

“It is a role acknowledged and valued not just by unions and their members, but also by some of the UK’s biggest and most successful employers. Jaguar Land Rover, British Aerospace, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, British Airways, Morrison’s, Asda to name just a few all have and provide paid time off to union reps. Their contribution is also acknowledged by the CBI. The case for union reps and the small amount of paid time off that they receive is conclusive.”

Ÿ TUC Stronger Unions blog. TUC guide to the union safety effect. The Guardian.

Site firms ordered to release blacklisting information

Hat tip TUC risks ,Dave Smith, who was blacklisted for many years is one of my former TUC tutors.  At the height of the London building boom despite being a skilled carpenter he could not get a job due to his trade union activities. He and his family had to rely on social security. 

"A High Court judge has ordered 30 construction firms, including Sir Robert McAlpine and Balfour Beatty, to disclose all emails and correspondence linked to the blacklisting of union reps and safety activists. The ruling came at the end of a two-day hearing last week where it emerged that documents had been destroyed linking the firms with the illegal covert blacklister, the industry-controlled and financed Consulting Association. Firms and four individuals will now have to carry out costly searches of back-up computer records of emails to disclose any relevant information by 12 February.

The court also ruled that contractors must pay costs for the hearing, estimated at up to £100,000. The union-backed High Court hearing is part of ongoing legal action on behalf of 168 blacklisted workers. In October last year major construction firms admitted their involvement in the illegal blacklist (Risks 724). Howard Beckett, director of legal services with the union Unite, commented: “Despite admitting their guilt, it is shameful the lengths that some of the construction firms involved in blacklisting have gone to cover up their involvement.” He added that the “stain of blacklisting” would not be fully removed “until there is a full public inquiry and the livelihoods of the blacklisted is restored by the firms involved giving them a permanent job.” 

Dave Smith of the Blacklist Support Group, whose members are also party to the court case, said: “All of the platitudes and half apologies, all their crocodile tears and claims of rogue managers from the companies over the past six or seven years are clearly nonsense. Documents have been destroyed and directors of multinational companies are hiding stuff on their laptops.” The former UCATT safety rep and blacklisted worker added: “It calls into question all of the promises made to Parliament and the High Court. I am not a lawyer but I would have thought that destroying evidence that would almost certainly have been used in a court case might be considered perverting the course of justice.”

Ÿ  Unite news release. Blacklist blog. Morning Star. Construction Enquirer.

1200 dead so far & 7 years to go? Qatar: The human toll of FIFA’s corruption

Shocking chart and story from Washington Post. Hat tip TUC Risks. People quite rightly go on about the corruption and money but what about this waste of human life? Support the TUC "Play fair" campaign.

"The Washington Post has flipped the focus from the financial corruption gripping football’s global governing body, instead highlighting concerns about the considerable and deadly human price paid as a result of FIFA’s failings.

“In the end, it only took a $150 million scandal to make Americans care about soccer,” the paper notes. “FIFA, the notoriously corrupt and yet seemingly invincible governing body of world soccer, has finally landed itself an indictment that some would say is worthy of its reputation.

The charges against a handful of senior FIFA officials include money laundering, racketeering, bribery and fraud. In short, the federal lawsuit alleges what millions of soccer fans have suspected all along: that FIFA officials have been using the organisation's massive influence to line their pocketbooks.”

 But the Washington Post adds “a closer look suggests that there is a lot of real-world suffering happening as a direct result of FIFA's decisions. For the most obvious example of this, look to Qatar… a report by the International Trade Union Confederation has estimated 1,200 deaths so far, with up to 4,000 additional worker deaths by 2022.”

 Commenting on the corruption charges laid by the US Justice Department against several FIFA officials, the paper notes “as the families of 1,200 dead workers can attest, in many ways the damage has already been done. If FIFA board members did indeed accept bribes from Qatar to let it host the 2022 cup, it would show how backroom corruption can have widespread and fatal consequences.”

Safety inspections are not optional – Governments should respect international law and protect workers (so should employers)

Hat tip TUC Risks. We need to stop our Government (and employers) ignoring international law and make them take responsibility for the safety of their workers.  UK Employees who work for anti-trade union employers such as Ealing based Catalyst Housing Association are in an even worse place, since if you work for an employer who refuses to recognise a trade union you don't have State or Safety rep workplace protection either.

"The UK government is breaking international rules requiring safety inspections of all workplaces, an International Labour Organisation (ILO) ruling indicates. In November, ILO issued is findings on a complaint by Dutch unions about their government’s failure to comply with a number of ILO conventions.

The unions believed cutbacks and reorganisation meant an effective inspectorate and related medical service no longer existed. Like the Netherlands, the UK has ratified and is required to abide by the ILO’s Labour Inspections convention. This states: “Workplaces shall be inspected as often and as thoroughly as is necessary to ensure the effective application of the relevant legal provisions”.

Other parts of the convention lay down requirements for inspectors’ independence, training, access to advice, and provision of local offices. The ILO ruled the Dutch government was breaching the convention’s requirements because of its failings on the number and frequency of inspections, the support provided for inspectors and the system for notification of occupational diseases. The ILO also stressed the importance of unannounced inspections, noting the provisions applied to “all workplaces, particularly in enterprises that are not considered to be in high-risk sectors and in small enterprises.”

According to TUC head of safety Hugh Robertson, the majority of UK workplaces are exempt from unannounced inspections and the Health and Safety Executive’s medical service has been decimated. He concluded “many of the arguments used by the Dutch trade unionists apply equally or even more so in the UK, where the Coalition government has slashed inspections, while at the same time reducing the number of HSE offices and level of support available. The Dutch government has been told to put their house in order. We will be asking the UK government to do the same.”

TUC Stronger Unions blog.

ILO Governing Body report, 6 November 2014.

ILO Labour Inspections Convention, No.81.

Performance management is a bad business

I support 100% this criticism about so-called "Performance Management". It is in my experience divisive, unfair and destroys team work. Didn't realise that it encouraged "cannibalism" but...

"Performance management, a worker assessment system that pits workers against each other and is linked to a massive intensification of work (Risks 624), is also a very bad idea for business, the union Prospect has said. Studies have shown the approach to cause high levels of workplace stress, burnout (Risks 664) and ill-health (Risks 661). 

But Prospect says while a long list of blue chip companies have abandoned the “rank and yank” system, the UK civil service is persisting with an approach that is bad for staff and bad for performance (Risks 639). Prospect national safety officer Sarah Page says it is now a year since software giant Microsoft announced to its staff its decision to abandon the performance management system that had been blamed for 10 years of lost creativity, instead creating “a culture of cannibalism”. 

Big names that have also dropped performance management include Ford, General Electric and Caterpillar, she says. The Prospect safety specialist adds that in the wake of financial scandals, “when many like Prospect are promoting Good Work – employee voice, a culture based on trust and fairness etc – it is alarming to witness the apparent corrosion of civil service performance management.” 

She warns: “The predictable escalating conflict and levels of employee ill-health with their inevitable impact on service delivery will expose this false economy.” Hat tip TUC risks

Ÿ  Prospect safety blog, Good Work campaign,

Ÿ  stress resources and advice on performance management.

Ÿ  The Guardian.

Safety Matters: Pre-employment health checks, asbestos in schools and risky work fines

Nothing much is supposed to happen in August but check out this week’s TUC weekly on-line bulletin  “Risks”.

Pre-employment health checks are to become illegal under the Equality Act in October. Employers will not be able to ask health questions or make medical checks on job applicants before offering them the job. This will make it far more difficult for them to discriminate against the disabled since they would then have to “justify” why they are withdrawing a job offer after they discover someone has a disability.

Excellent news!

Waltham Forest Council Ace UNISON health & safety rep, Su Manning is mentioned also for “hammering” her employer over HSE enforcement notices about their failure to carry out checks over asbestos and legionnaire disease in schools (schools????? I kid you not)

Another important advance reported was that the Appeal Court has ruled that it was legal for courts to give firms big fines over significant (risky) safety failures which could (but luckily didn’t) have resulted in large numbers of people being killed.

This is fundamental to the H&S principle that prevention is much, much better than cure.

(picture I took of disturbed and crumbling asbestos pipe lagging in a library basement used as a storage area during a trade union safety inspection in 2003)

Voluntarism has Failed

This week’s TUC Risks E-zine reports on a campaign by two leading health & safety publications to introduce statutory health & safety duties for Directors. Check out the petition call and detailed arguments here.

The voluntary approach previously agreed with the HSE and business leaders has pretty clearly failed. The only way to get rogue companies and organisations to take their responsibility seriously for workers and public safety is the threat of criminal law sanctions.

Well run organisations have nothing to fear but action is desperately needed since it is estimated that 9 out of 10 injuries at work are attributable to management failure.

I remember attending a trade union safety conference some years ago where a Conservative MP (forget his name) who was also a company director was a panel speaker. He said that he did not understand that he faced imprisonment as a Company director if he allowed fraud to take place but not if negligently allowed his workers to be killed.

(pic from memorial in Three Mills Green Park - Newham)