TRADE UNION NEWS

September 2000

The GMB union is rising to the Government's occupational health challenge of reducing work related disease through mobilisation of their 25,000 safety representatives to help control chemical hazards in the workplace.

In a new publication Chemical Safety, the union outlines a five step approach for safety representatives to take to ensure that their employers control the use of chemicals. The approach covers the process by which chemicals first enter the workplace right through to their final safe disposal. An accompanying poster also helps in the identification of how chemicals enter the body and in the precautions that need to be taken.

The scale of exposure to workplace chemicals is enormous. The Health and Safety Executive, for example, estimate that 250,000 people in Britain are suffering from work-related respiratory diseases and skin problems. According to Nigel Bryson, Director of the GMB's Health and Environment Department: "Our information and support will help GMB safety representatives make sure that their employers obey the law. This will assist reduce the crippling amount of ill health through exposure to chemicals".

In partnership with the Health and Safety Executive and local employers, the GMB has held a series of seminars on how to effectively use HSE's COSHH Essentials publication in the workplace, at present the union is the biggest single purchaser of the publication.

The union publication covers: chemical hazards, routes of entry into the body, the legal position and the role of safety representatives in relation to chemical safety. With regard to the five step approach, this consists of: deciding whether the chemical is hazardous, carrying out an assessment, taking precautions, monitoring exposure and health checks. Each step contains a checklist which safety representatives can apply at the workplace.

Further information can be obtained from the GMB Health and Environment Department, 22-24 Worple Road, London, SW19 4DD. (Telephone 0208 947 3131).

According to UNISON, a large City Council have created a method of reducing their accident rate by over 90% - they simply do not record them.

Apparently, the council's safety department have installed a new computer system to record accident figures and rates, but it will not record any accident which does not result in time off work - because they are considered statistically irrelevant, not all of the council sections recorded them previously and correlating the data is time consuming.

UNISON is also angry that the decision was taken without any consultation with the union branch or the safety committee. When the matter was raised on the safety committee, UNISON claim that the management side refused to record all accidents at present but said that they might reconsider the position when the system was fully operational.

The union is concerned over how the employer is intending to take action to prevent near misses and less serious accidents from becoming serious time-off-work accidents, when they will no longer know about them. Apart from their legal duties to report certain accidents etc under RIDDOR, employers need to be seeking information on all accidents and incidents in order to: ensure action is taken to prevent a more serious problem; assist in monitoring, planning and prioritisation; monitor and review risk assessments; provide feedback for use in developing future health and safety strategies; and provide information to safety representatives, safety committees and others.

UNISON have also recently obtained £157,000 damages for a theatre nurse who was poisoned by disinfectant. The nurse worked for a NHS Trust and was regularly exposed to excessive levels of a disinfectant containing glutaraldehyde. As a result she consequently developed occupational asthma and was forced to retire due to ill-health.

This represents one of the largest awards ever for occupational asthma, the damages include compensation for pain and suffering, past and future loss of earnings, loss of pension and loss of congenial employment.

Speaking after the court's decision, the UNISON member said that: Nursing is the only job I've ever done and I really loved it. If I could go back to the job tomorrow I would. It has been a real strain going through the court case and the stress has made my symptoms worse. I still wake up coughing at night, unable to breathe".

Owen Tudor, the TUC's Senior Policy Officer for Prevention, Rehabilitation and Compensation, stresses the role of safety representatives in the Summer issue of the UCATT publication Building Worker.

According to Owen Tudor, work-related illness kills more building workers than so-called accidents. Every week, at least one person dies on a construction site. But every day, a former construction worker dies of mesothelioma. That is why the TUC is backing the Working Well Together campaign launched by the Health and Safety Commission's construction industry advisory committee.

The TUC's contribution will be to provide training and guidance for safety representatives in the construction industry. Owen Tudor adds that: "We want the campaign to lead to a greater commitment to real workforce involvement. Workers in construction should be treated with respect. But that means much more than providing better toilet facilities! It means taking their views seriously and involving them in decision making through union safety reps".

Like UCATT, the TUC wants to see roving safety representatives and they also want to see safety representatives being granted further powers and more protection from victimisation. The TUC has prepared a portfolio of partnership case-studies for use in a special conference. Examples include a utilities company that has empowered its safety representatives to take immediate action if they encounter health and safety breaches and an engineering company where risk assessments are completed jointly by managers and safety representatives.

The TUC's action plan for construction includes guidance for union safety representatives on: chemical safety, dealing with asbestos, noise and manual handling. Over a two year period, the TUC will be training construction safety representatives to deal with health issues as well as safety issues. Next year the TUC will survey the safety representatives in order to find out what they are doing about health risks at work and what help they need.

The RAAW section of the T&G is continuing its campaign against the use of child labour on British farms. Barry Leathwood attacks the traditional image of children fruit picking in the Kent countryside. He claims that: "The reality is somewhat different. There is real concern that children are kept away from school to help on the farm, damaging their educational opportunities".

Farming is also the only industry which regularly allows children into the workplace. In the last ten years, around seventy children under the age of sixteen have been killed during agricultural work activities. Evidence has also started to emerge showing that this is only part of the problem. Many accidents requiring hospital treatment, for example, are not reported. Similarly, agricultural vehicles on the highway are not considered to be farm accidents even when they are involved in travel related to agricultural operations.

The central objective of the union's campaign is to remove young people from tractors and dangerous machinery. Dr Phil Mizen, lecturer in social policy at the University of Warwick, recently co-directed research into children's experience of working in England and Wales. He points out that: "The absence of an effective legislative framework and the inability to enforce what does exist means that most children work outside of any meaningful forms of regulation. Children can work on family farms from the age of 11 and operate farm machinery from the age of 13, but it is certain that many do both from a younger age. Farms can be dangerous places and the disproportionate number of children involved in farm-related accidents suggests that many of the injuries are a direct consequence of work. And, alarmingly, there is no knowledge of the longer-term consequences of exposure to the chemicals and pesticides in widespread use on British farms".

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Mike Everley