TRADE UNION NEWS

January 2000

According to the National Union of Journalists (NUJ): "The full report of the world’s largest study into keyboarding and RSI limped into the public domain in October- seven years after it started, four years after the final results were collected, two and a half years after the HSE received the first draft- and a week after a Journalist story revealed its existence".

Apparently the Institute of Managers report reveals that one in seven keyboard workers had recent severe symptoms sufficient to warrant medical advice, although the HSE Guidance on VDU’s still claims that "only a small proportion of VDU users actually suffer ill health as a result of their work". The report also found that seating was the main furniture factor associated with RSI, which runs counter to Judge Ian Kennedy’s finding, in the NUJ’s Financial Times RSI case, that "none of the plaintiffs can have suffered more than passing discomfort" from sitting on a sub-standard chair.

Similar accusations that the HSE sat on a report were made several months back when several unions claimed that research evidence, showing that the protection from respirators associated with asbestos removal did not in practice give the same results as claimed by manufacturers in laboratory conditions, was withheld for a period of time.

Neither of these claims fit in well with the Government’s intentions in relation to Open Government. Additionally, the NUJ claim that the HSE instructed its press officers not to deal with queries from the Journalist’s RSI correspondent Sean Feeney. The ban being conveyed to him by the head of the HSE’s Open Government Unit, Ian Drummond. The letter sent to Sean Feeney claimed that: "Your attitude to and accusations about HSE officials have not been helpful. Your requests and telephone calls have absorbed a significant amount of time… and we believe at the least tend to vexatiousness".

Another journalist to have been greylisted by HSE for asking too many questions is Rory O’Neill, who was made subject to a "special monitoring exercise" by the Open Government Unit. A leaked memo explained the decision to monitor "enquirers who appear to have an interest in a range of HSE activities and may be looking to exploit replies received in ways unfavourable to HSE". Rory O’Neill stresses that this is a slur on his professional ability. Adding: "I have never broken protocol. I only ever call the press office, and when I speak to other officials it is because they leak to me like mad".

Suggestions of reports being suppressed, bans being placed on journalists seeking information in the course of their work and the recent disclosure that several Gulf War veterans have had to fund trips to America in order to be diagnosed as suffering from depleted uranium in the body, tend to leave the Government’s Open Government and Freedom of Information measures in tatters from a health and safety perspective.

The NUJ has called upon HSE Director General Jenny Bacon to lift the ban on Sean Feeney. NUJ General Secretary John Foster claiming that: "It is disgraceful that a public body should refuse information to a professional journalist making legitimate enquiries. They say that his enquiries have been vexatious, but he has just been doing his job and a good one at that".

According to the NUJ: "The HSE has admitted giving misleading information about its RSI research and breaking its policy of publishing research. And yet more secret RSI reports have come to light". Apparently the NUJ’s allegations are being investigated by senior staff at the HSE. Dr Paul Oldershaw, Head of the Health Sciences Division, is reported as saying: "I’ve been exploring what on earth happened here".

The NUJ claim that five further HSE-funded RSI reports have emerged covering the crucial issues in the NUJ’s Financial Times court case. One of these, by the HSE’s own Health and Safety Laboratory, apparently rejects the arguments used by the FT’s medical experts and the approach of Judge Ian Kennedy that "hard signs" are necessary to diagnose RSI conditions, saying standard clinical signs and tests are "generally unreliable". According to the NUJ, it is unclear whether the HSL reports have been published as they are marked "not to be communicated outside HSE without the approval of the HSE Authorising Officer". The NUJ also claim that HSE has failed to put RSI guidance on its web-site despite giving a commitment to do so in its 1998/99 Plan.

Finally, the NUJ point out that the HSE is itself facing an outbreak of RSI among its overworked staff. The 1997/98 Annual Report reported a "marked increase" of suspected RSI. Tackling the causes, the report claimed, was a priority. Cheekily the NUJ added that no-one within HSE was available to comment because everyone had been instructed not to talk to the Journalist’s reporter!

The GMB union, along with other unions and the TUC, welcomed the ban on white asbestos which came into force in Britain in November 1999. It is now illegal to import, supply or use any form of asbestos in a new product or building.

According to GMB General Secretary John Edmonds, "this means that for the first time after 40 years of campaigning that it is now illegal to use asbestos in any form. Unfortunately, the death toll from past exposure will continue for many years. The next step is to set up an asbestos register to identify where asbestos is, and for the Health and Safety Executive to impose severe penalties on those who flout the law".

The GMB claim that:

• Over 300,000 people will have been killed as a result of exposure to asbestos in Britain since 1900.
• The Health and Safety Executive expect another 175,000 to die from past exposure over the next 25 years.
• It is estimated that there are between 6 and 10 million tonnes of asbestos in Britain in buildings currently in use.

John Edmonds adds that: "Employers knew years ago that asbestos was lethal, it should have been banned then. As a result of this shameful delay asbestos deaths are at epidemic levels. Thousands of people have been killed, or have lost loved ones, because they have worked with or been exposed to this dreadful fibre".

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Mike Everley