The Hazards Campaign
is a network of
resource centres and campaigners
on health and safety at work
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The Hazards Campaign
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participants report on the Conference “Health & Safety: Revitalised
or Reversed?” The main aim of this conference was to review and evaluate what progress has been made towards meeting trade union and campaigning demands for improving workplace health & safety. These demands include more rights for trade union safety representatives; improved regulatory protection; more and better enforcement; the introduction of stiffer penalties; legislation on corporate killing and directors responsibilities; and to meeting the targets set out in the government’s policy statement “Revitalising Health & Safety” and the subsequent “Improving health together” policy statement, both issued in 2000. Many of these demands were set out in detail in the IER publication “Regulating Health & Safety: the way forward” (1999) edited by two of the foremost academics in the field of workers health & safety, Professors Phil James (Middlesex) and Dave Walters (Cardiff). The conference launched a revised version of the book. The conference was chaired by Susan Murray, Head of Health & Safety at the Transport & General Workers Union. 110 delegates attended, mostly workplace trade union representatives and activists. Mick Clapham MP, Chair of the parliamentary all-party group on Occupational Health & Safety opened the conference, with a view from parliament. Setting the tone quite firmly, Mick said that the Revitalising H&S targets had not been met, and there was genuine disquiet that little has been done to address issues of work-related death and major injuries, or to develop appropriate legislation backed-up by effective enforcement in all areas of workplace health and safety. In mid 2004, the DWP Select Committee had called for substantial improvements and progress, but the Government rejected its recommendations. The truth is that there has been more emphasis on getting people off Incapacity Benefit and back into work, and a new set of proposals will be issued shortly. The hard fact is that over 2 million people are on Incapacity Benefit, over a third with some kind of mental health problem or disability; and every year about 25,000 people leave work and are never able to work again because of ill-health or injury. Subsequent speakers filled in more detail. Phil James detailed the Revitalising targets set in 2000:
The Revitalising Strategy set-out 44 Action Points, most of them administrative and bureaucratic, (i.e. non-legislative), and the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) had taken some action on these – suggesting improvements in public procurement practices; publicising individual workers right to contact the HSE, issued small firm guidance; on directors duties, they had only issued basic guidance (but called it a code of practice, which it is not). There had been no progress on other points, e.g. dealing with the changing structure of employment; increased penalties and imprisonment for offences; bringing forward more innovative sentences and penalties; establishing the right to take private prosecutions for statutory breaches; and the removal of Crown immunity. Traditional means of enforcement (inspection and enforcement notices and prosecutions) are replaced with encouraging voluntary compliance and reform. The new HSE strategy to 2010 and beyond focuses even more on this retreat from enforcement, and talks of partnership, education, persuasion, the business case for H&S and winning hearts and minds. At the end of 2005, the HSE’s own evaluation of progress towards the Revitalising targets is summarised as:
Phil also pointed to IER estimates that simple ‘occupational’ changes (e.g in the kind of jobs people do or the industry they work in) will lead to a reduction in fatal and major injuries of almost 8%. So in theory, we can legitimately ask “What does it mean if we do achieve these targets?” The danger is that the government will benefit simply by cyclical and employment changes without doing anything, but claim the credit. Steve Tombs from the Centre for Corporate Accountability pointed out that we were still waiting for legislation on corporate killing. In 1996 the Law Commission published a report highlight the problem of work-related death, and calling for legislation on corporate killing. Since then, there had been almost 6,000 work-related deaths recorded, many of which resulted from management failures and negligence. Since 1997 when the New Labour government took office, 50 pieces of criminal justice legislation have been passed, and 1,000 new criminal offences created; some legislation has gone through the parliamentary process in a matter of days. Further developments in the area of corporate accountability have led to calls to include duties on directors and senior decision-makers, seen as a necessary condition to drive forward improvements on employer performance. Despite Labour including a commitment to introducing legislation in its 2001 election manifesto, a private members bill on corporate killing and directors duties failed to get Government support and fell. The current draft Bill introduced in March 2005 does not include duties on individual director’s, hasn’t dealt with Crown immunity, and doesn’t tackle the main problem in large organisations of identifying a controlling mind, and would allow individuals to distance themselves by delegation or finding ways of hiding from what is happening. It is a step backwards. The joint Home Affairs/ DWP select committee has scrutinised the draft. It recommends moving towards legislation with some urgency, and a return to the original proposals of the Law Commission report. It should link directors duties to the Health & Safety at Work Act Sections 2 - 6. In cases before the courts, juries should be able to consider the corporate culture when deciding verdicts; secondary liability for individuals who may have contributed to a death should be included, there should be a wider package of corporate sanctions, and the Crown Immunity provisions are too broad. Dave Walters discussed the lack of progress on worker involvement in the last 10 years. We know that union organised workplaces are safer, so extending worker organisation and involvement is a key to more general improvements. For effective worker representation, involvement and meaningful consultation to take place, there needs to be an appropriate regulatory framework; workers and unions need to prioritise health & safety; employers have to be committed to participation; external support for and recognition of the fact that workers may have alternative views to employers; and reps need training, information and the opportunity to consult with members and workers. In the structurally changed and changing employment market, there are now many circumstances where adequate representation is either very difficult to achieve, or simply doesn’t and cannot exist. A new statutory framework of rights needs to be developed if effective worker representation is to be extended into those areas where it is weak or non-existent. Simon Pickvance from Sheffield Occupational Health Advisory Service argued that ideas about what are work-related health issues have not caught-up with the real world, and that today’s common problems such as stress, repetitive strain injury and musculo-skeletal injuries are not treated in the right way, and often not even recognised as work-related problems. Research has shown that many other conditions such as vibration white finger, deafness, skin diseases etc are massively under-reported. Poor and ineffective data collection means that the state doesn’t even know what the occupational diseases of the moment are, or where they are most prevalent, or what real damage they cause, or what needs to be done to deal with them. He doubted there was the political will to allocate the resources necessary to tackle the problems. It was questionable whether-or-not the Government had adequately translated the EU Framework Directive into legislation. The Directive requires that a structure for the prevention of illness and injury be established, and that prevention should be undertaken by competent persons – and that has not been achieved in Britain. We should consider a challenge at the EU level. John McDonnell MP contributed some suggestions on the need for unions to influence Government more aggressively. Given the Government’s majority was reduced to 69, it would only take 35 Labour members to vote against the whip to defeat the government. In the House of Commons, there were hundreds of Labour members who retained contacts with their sponsoring unions, and there are trade union groups that meet regularly, and an all-trade union group. Trade unions need to establish a clear agenda on health & safety, and develop a more effective relationship with sponsored MP’s on the issue, and use this to press for what they want. The private sector and employers dominate the policy machinery currently, and it’s time for a change. Hugh Robertson, head of Health and Safety policy at the TUC highlighted 4 priority areas for the TUC; organisation, safety reps rights, enforcement and accountability. Safety rep’s organisations currently covers about half of all workers, and this needs extending. We also need to be more representative, and get more young, female and black workers active. Safety reps rights need extending to overcome current problems with time-off and training, lack of employer engagement and lack of access to support, resources and information. New rights must include a duty on employers to formally respond to safety reps reports and approaches; to formalise the UIN system; to allow roving safety reps to act on behalf of other indirect workers; and ensure better access to training. It was important reps use the existing rights; for example less that 50% of safety reps who responded to the latest TUC survey did regular quarterly workplace inspections. We also need to overcome the lack of recognition by the HSE, and the failure to enforce the Consultation regulations. The TUC has developed an organisation campaign and materials to use in workplaces; the HSE has set-up the Worker Involvement Unit to make proposals and initiate change; and there will soon be consultation on new rights. The retreat from enforcement must be reversed. In 2004-05 HSE prosecutions fell by 25%, and in the local authority sector, they have fallen by 75% in the last 10 years. The fall in the number of inspectors must be reversed, and more resources are needed for HSE and local authorities. An extra £35 million would double the number of inspectors. A strategy needs to be developed that does more effective targeting and focussing on enforcing health issues On accountability, the TUC is concerned about the failure to regulate on corporate killing and director’s responsibilities; the retreat from the requirement to include H&S performance in the annual report, and the lack of effective sanctions on bodies corporate. Mick Holder of the London Hazards Centre substituting for Hazards magazine editor Rory O’Neill, presented a paper on the Government’s continued drive towards deregulation, despite the fact that Britain is one of the most deregulated economies in the industrialised world. The risk based approach to inspection and the light/limited touch advocated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, coupled with the Hampton Report recommendations calling for an end to unnecessary inspections and paperwork, and the reorganisation of 63 different regulatory bodies into just 11 enforcers, despite evidence that business generally does not find H&S regulation a particular burden, does not inspire confidence that in future workers will be safer and able to work in an environment that will not damage their health. We are saddled with the Government’s and HSC’s definitions of what presents an acceptable level of risk – and a failure to qualitatively differentiate between risks that individuals chose to expose themselves to, and those imposed on them by employers without their consent. Chilling statements by the prime minister about the need to compete with India and China, where the death and injury rate is more than 10 times the UK level do not bode well for the future, and indicate the need for a solid campaign of opposition. Steve Kay, Chair of the HSE Branch of Prospect, which represents 80% of HSE professional and technical staff gave a worker/trade union perspective from the inside. Adverse changes in the organisation, management and work of the HSE were small but continuous, and in the union’s view were leading to a position where employers would be able to do as they please unfettered by regulations, HSE inspectors would be emasculated, and the HSE would eventually be privatised by a Government who’s enthusiasm for privatisation exceeds its predecessors. The ultimate aim is to let “responsible” employers self-regulate and be inspection-free, while only “rogue businesses” would need to be inspected and externally regulated – this idea is bizarre – presumably the rogue business will self-inform the HSE they need to be visited and enforcement action taken. All these changes, along with those recommended by Hampton lead inexorably to deregulation, reduced/limited inspection and perhaps most importantly, cutting HSE budget. The HSC is not only responding to the Government’s agenda but positively leading it, by cutting inspector numbers, adopting a policy of less regulatory activity, investigating only a tiny proportion of serious injuries and incidents, letting EMAS slip away into the dust, preventing worker contact with inspectors when they phone the HSE, and directing an inspectors activity on workplace visits more restrictively. Initiatives to undermine what are legitimate HSE functions, such as the current Workplace Health Connect project, where private contractors are being paid to provide advice services that are absolutely distanced from the HSE deliberately contain no enforcement mechanisms, and is reliant on employers consenting to an advisor visiting the workplace. This road can only lead to a general regulatory system disappearing, being replaced by a rump organisation that will provide just enough investigation to clear the minimum public toleration threshold, so politicians don’t get the blame. Prospect and its sister unions PCS and UNISON (in local authority EH Departments) want to see the status of health & safety crime raised, so, like drink-driving, it attracts a high degree of social disapproval and stigma. For this to happen, the current slide into oblivion must be reversed. In the final session, Phil James and Dave Walters almost offered an apology for the fact that, since the original version of “Regulating Health & Safety: the way forward” was published in 1999, and the optimism generated by the Revitalising Health & Safety strategy, there has been little if any real progress. In the real world, the scale of work-related harm continues – over a million workers injured every year; 3 million suffer ill health caused or made worse by work, and 25,000 permanently leave the workforce. There is no clear evidence that the Revitalising targets have been achieved, and any improvements may be incidental and related to other factors; the voluntary approach has been re-emphasised by the HSE, Hampton and senior politicians, and HSE activity and resources have been reduced. In the real world, it is the harmed workers and the taxpayer who bear 70% of the costs of work-related death, injury and ill-health; and consequently employers take little notice of the HSE banging-on about the business case for safe and healthy workplaces. The real evidence shows that, like all criminals, it’s the fear of being found out and punished, not “education and persuasion” that concentrates the mind of employers, particularly smaller ones. In the real world, the truth is that the need for a radical reform agenda has not gone away. The retreat from enforcement has not produced the goods. We still need to campaign for: 1) Improvements in Legal Duties:
2) Statutory framework administration:
3) Worker representation and involvement:
4) Amelioration of work-related harm:
This was an interesting and informative event – despite being a gloomy analysis and prognosis. There was enough here to fire-up delegates enthusiasm to effect change, so let’s hope delegates left with a renewed determination to set these wrongs to right, and to campaign within their own organisations for significant changes in approach. This is, after all, a Labour Government initially elected with an unprecedented majority in the House of Commons, and consequently had the ability to do anything it wanted to benefit the victims of previous deregulation, privatisation, growing inequality and the neo-liberal agenda of unfettered capitalism. This is a Government that should still respect the class that gave it organisation, life and meaning, and take seriously the level of harm that workers suffer in either generating profits for employers or providing much-needed public services. It must determine to act to reduce that harm, make employers accountable for their actions, and adopt a regulatory regime and enforcement approach to employer crime as enthusiastic as those enforcement regimes dealing with child sex crime, or terrorism, or drug dealing, or petty street crime. Then we might truly claim this is a civilised society. John Bamford.
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