Nearly fifty years after the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 women continue to face harassment and violence at work. Join the Hazards Campaign event in discussion with Sarah Woolley (BFAWU General Secretary), Joan McNulty (UNISON National Health and Safety Chair), Fliss Premru (#MeTU) and Jo Seery (Thompsons Solicitors) to explore the issues and solutions needed.
Sign up here
Date and time: Thursday, 7 March 2024 18:00 – 19:30 GMT
Please take solidarity action to support Kevin Scally, sacked EIS safety rep at Edinburgh College.
Solidarity from the Troublemakers Striking for Safety fringe meeting, 29/30 July 2023
The victimisation of our Edinburgh College EIS branch official and safety rep Kevin Scally is a matter of principle and social justice. We’ve taken four days’ strike action so far. And we’ll carry on striking four days a week indefinitely till we win Kevin’s reinstatement. To encourage our management to do the right thing, could you send a message of protest to the Principal and Chair of the College Board- (Audrey.Cumberford@edinburghcollege.ac.uk; ) and (Nora.Senior@edinburghcollege.ac.uk; copying in the EIS-FELA branch secretary, pennygower1@gmail.com;). If you have any questions or want to invite Kev and Penny to speak at your branch, please write to Penny. So, something along the lines of the following would be great, or anything you want to send….
‘Dear Ms Cumberford and Ms Senior,
I am writing on behalf of my trade union branch and wish to express our concern at the treatment of EIS Branch Official and Safety Rep, Kevin Scally. Edinburgh College has already reached your target of £6m savings through voluntary severance. Kevin is an experienced lecturer who can deliver courses the College needs to be covered and he is the only employee to be made redundant. So we can only assume Mr Scally’s sacking as due to the fact that he is a trade union representative. Shockingly, you refuse to even meet with the union representatives under the College’s Avoidance of Disputes’ Procedure. You also refused to hear the EIS branch grievance against this compulsory redundancy. Yet trade union recognition is a fundamental right. The stress this has caused Kevin and his family can only be imagined. Your behaviour as managers of a public service charged with delivering education to working class adults has been appalling. We urge that you reinstate Kevin immediately. Regards …………………. NAME OF TRADE UNION/ WORKPLACE’
News release, 28th June 2023, No embargo
On Friday 23rd June a report was made to the Hazards Campaign meeting, that the enewsletter RISKS has been cancelled by the TUC with immediate effect.
We are shocked and very alarmed at this decision, because for many safety reps (especially from smaller trade unions with no dedicated health and safety department), this was their main weekly source of health and safety information.
RISKS provided regular and up to date health and safety information from workers’ perspective from around the health and safety movement in the UK, as well as from global health and safety unions and organisations.
RISKS provided information and analysis on what the government, the TUC, trade unions and other relevant organisations are doing, campaigns, workplace victories on health and safety and on going struggles, relevant scientific and technical information on all aspects of health, safety, environment and Just Transition, in a readable format from trusted source as it was edited by Rory O’ Neill editor of Hazards Magazine.
RISKS has been invaluable for thousands of safety reps and union health and safety officers, for many years. It helped to create and network the community of safety reps, and health and safety activists across the UK in all unions, types of workplaces and sectors.
The sudden end of RISKS is a huge loss for us all.
In the absence of the TUC reconsidering this regressive decision, we urge all trade unions and progressive organisations, to now put every effort in to maximising and increasing the support for the Hazards Magazine.
Hazards Magazine is the most treasured and valuable health and safety publication in the Hazards and health and safety movement. Hazards articles feature in almost all TUC and union health and safety courses, it is the first place to go for research for many of us, and it is much envied across the world’s labour movements which don’t have an equivalent or have long since lost their own print publications.
So we ask you now to recommit to support and grow support for Hazards Magazine to ensure its future as a print plus online publication by subscribing and encouraging others to subscribe.
Contact Jawad Qasrawi Sub Editor sub@hazards.org
Hazards Magazine: www.hazards.org/subscribe
Thank you
Janet Newsham, Chair of Hazards Campaign
Greater Manchester Hazards Centre (GMHC) is working with trade unions to reduce worker exposure to harmful, toxic chemicals in a project on ‘Toxics Use Reduction’.
To help safety reps deal with toxic exposures better, we need to know more about the types of chemicals workers are exposed to, the harms caused, their awareness and knowledge of risks and of successful eliminations or substitution of safer chemicals or changes to processes that have been made in your workplace.
Please go to the following link and complete the questions, it should only take about 10 mins.
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6C6WWW6
Delegates at a pre-Covid Hazards conference participating in the innovative Body and Risk Mapping workshop.
In 2019, 185 trade union national, regional and branch organisations, personal injury solicitors, and groups and individuals supported the Hazards Conference. Since then we have held two online conferences during the difficult circumstances of the pandemic. These have been held free of charge, with the kind sponsorship of some organisations, but we cannot sustain this for any longer.
Hazards sponsors in the past have always risen to the challenge and continued their invaluable and essential support. The last two years have been tremendously difficult for all workers. In the Hazards Campaign we have worked hard to respond to workers’ and trade unions’ needs.
The feedback we have received over the last two years has been encouraging and to this end we are moving the Hazards Conference to a hybrid model, where delegates can attend in person or participate online.
We would like to ensure all participants have an equal opportunity to attend and participate in the conference but we are acutely aware that some of our regular attendees have health conditions which will make them at risk of serious illness if they became infected by Covid and therefore we are providing an opportunity for everyone to attend, either in person or online.
However we will incur additional IT and administrative costs to do this, but hopefully with the support of sponsors we can keep the price as low as possible.
Therefore, please would your organisation consider sponsoring the 34th National Hazards Conference. If you would like to speak to someone about the conference then please email Janet at hazconf@gmhazards.org.uk
To sponsor please complete the Hazards Conference 2022 – sponsorship form and send it to c.bedale@btinternet.com or mail it to Caroline Bedale, 123 Coppice Street, Oldham OL8 4BH.
For further information please email Janet at hazconf@gmhazards.org.uk or
phone: 07734 317158
The Hazards Campaign is organising a national candlelit vigil to commemorate those who died because of work-related Covid-19.
The event on 11 March marks the second anniversary of when WHO declared Covid a pandemic. People will be encouraged to light candles, hold up pictures of work colleagues and loved ones who have died and invite people to say something about them.
The event is intended to include family members, workers, local trade unionists and politicians to support the event and will serve as a reminder that workers are still facing risks in the workplace every day.
If people don’t want to attend an event they can to put a poster in their window or light a candle safely on their doorstep, and post the picture online using a suggested hashtag:
#Candle4CovidkilledWorkers, #VigilForWorkers, #ShineLightOnWorkers
Please send information about what you are doing in your city, town or workplace to Janet Newsham so that we can share them on social media and through our trade union networks.
Press statement for immediate release, 3 April 2020
The Hazards Campaign has written to MPs and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) calling for the HSE to close down organisations which continue to place profits before people by exposing workers to unacceptable risks.
Workers are being forced to face foreseeable and preventable risk of exposure to Covid-19 at work and it is the HSE’s duty to intervene to protect them, when employers are breaching their legal health and safety duties to prevent those risks.
The Government’s contradictory policy on preventing transmission and spread of Covid-19 at work is causing deaths and is nothing less than ‘social murder’.
The Government states ‘stay at home; if you go out, stay 2 metres (6ft) away from other people at all times; wash your hands as soon as you get home; do not meet others, even friends or family; you can spread the virus even if you don’t have symptoms’ and at the same time say ‘only go outside for food, health reasons or work (but only if you cannot work from home)’ (https:www.gov.uk/coronavirus) The Government is keeping non-essential businesses open. This leaves workers being forced to go out to work, in conditions which place them in close contact with other workers, without the handwashing and cleaning hygiene precautions stated in Public Health Guidance and exposed to this deadly virus. Covid-19 is killing people of all ages, many of whom were previously healthy as well as those with underlying health risks.
As workers who develop Covid-19 will die at home or in hospital, there is a need to ensure their deaths are recorded at work, reported to HSE, Local Authorities under RIDDOR, and investigated later for work-related causes. This is essential information for future assessment of the effectiveness of workplace and government strategies on protecting workers and reducing Covid-19 transmission at work and will be essential in preventing deaths in future pandemics.
In addition, the HSE and Local Authority inspectors must be available to be contacted by concerned workers being threatened or forced to work in dangerous conditions, to be able to report negligent employers.
Janet Newsham, Chair of Hazards Campaign said:
“These workers have to travel to work on public transport further exposing themselves and other more essential critical workers to contracting the virus. Essential workplaces need to keep running for safety reasons or because they are producing critically needed equipment or supporting critical services. The health of these essential workers, including health care workers, must be protected while commuting to and from work but their ability to maintain safe, physical distance is made impossible by the many non-essential workers also commuting.
“Workers themselves are having to force employers to ‘do the right thing’ when it should be the Government and its health and safety enforcement agencies, taking the lead. The HSE must make clear unambiguous statements, that if employers in non-essential work cannot maintain conditions to meet public health guidance, then the workplace is unsafe and demand and follow that up with enforcement action to halt production, until the spread of the virus has been controlled. Government must provide a decent living wage for all workers in this situation.
“The Hazards Campaign also demand that, unless PPE is available at the correct standard, essential critical workers should limit their interventions to the protective level of their PPE, so that these workers are not exposed to the virus. In Spain there has been an estimated 14% of health workers diagnosed with the virus. (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-cases/health-workers-make-up-nearly-14-of-spains-coronavirus-cases-idUSKBN21B1MF) We must not run an underfunded, under-resourced health service with ‘expendable workers’. We need every health care worker to survive to help increase the chance of survival of all citizens.”
She added:
“We are witnessing Government reducing PPE standards to meet the levels of PPE available and NOT producing quickly the safest levels of PPE to protect all workers. Critical health workers need and deserve the best standards and no compromise. In the UK we still have some of the most advanced manufacturing facilities, we have the expertise and capability to produce all the PPE and equipment we need and we demand that the Government steps up its efforts to provide what is necessary.
“The HSE’s mission is ‘to prevent death, injury and ill-health in Great Britain’s workplaces – by becoming part of the solution’. (https://www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/insidehse.htm ) Hazards Campaign demand that the HSE does just that – it’s duty – to enforce employers legal duty to prevent illness, injury and death at work!”
The Hazards Campaign is a UK-wide network of resource centres and campaigners. The Hazards Campaign supports those organising and campaigning for justice and safety at work.
The Hazards Campaign
c/o Greater Manchester Hazards Centre
Windrush Millennium Centre
70 Alexandra Road
Manchester,
M16 7WD
ENGLAND
website • twitter @hazardscampaign • facebook
The national Hazards Campaign is urging the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to halve the workplace exposure limit for silica dust, a move it says will save 4,000 lives a year.
The campaign’s call came in response to a new ‘Choked’ report from Hazards magazine. This presents evidence for cutting the current legal limit of 0.1 mg/m3 for respirable crystalline silica to no more than 0.05 mg/m3, a move the report says would dramatically reduce the incidence of the lung scarring occupational disease silicosis, lung cancer, autoimmune diseases and other silica-related conditions.
Hazards reviewed the international scientific literature and internal HSE documents to calculate the annual excess silica-related death toll resulting from HSE’s repeat refusal to switch to and enforce the tighter standard, instead sticking with a level it admits comes with “significant risks”.
The report reveals that HSE’s own internal reports estimate the silicosis risk for workers is six times higher at the current HSE limit of 0.1 mg/m3, calculated at 30 cases per 100 workers exposed compared to just five per 100 at the tighter 0.05 mg/m3 standard. The United States and a number of other jurisdictions already work to the safer standard.
The Hazards Campaign is asking supporters to send an online postcard to Sarah Albon, the new chief executive of the HSE. Over 600,000 workers in the UK are regularly exposed to silica at work which is created when cutting, grinding drilling or polishing, natural substances such as rocks and sand and is a major constituent in bricks, tiles and concrete and materials. At least one-in-five workers in these jobs – and in some like stonemasonry and construction, possibly half – are exposed at or above the current deadly UK limit.
Choked! The evidence for introducing a lifesaving new silica dust exposure limit, Hazards, Number 147, September 2019.
ACTION: Send an e-postcard to HSE demanding it introduce a more protective silica standard no higher than 0.05mg/m³ and with a phased move to 0.025mg/m³.
Join the Hazards Campaign in Manchester on Sunday 1st October where we will be marching behind our new banner at the Tories Out march at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester.
Join us to tell the Government : “We love red tape – it’s better than bloody bandages”
We invite you to join us and to dress up in bloodied (fake blood or similar) bandages – there should be lots of Halloween costumes available in the shops if you don’t feel creative).
If you are lucky you may even get a photo with Janet in her bandages… for the price of a postcard!
We are organising a table for the beginning of the march to encourage people to sign postcards – telling the Government : “We love red tape it’s better than bloody bandages” and “enough is enough.”
Meeting place If possible we will our table up near to the Museum of Science and Industry end of Liverpool Road. If we can’t do that please ring one of the numbers below and keep an eye on @hazardscampaign and @jnewsham
Order of the day We aim to set up our table at about 10.00. Speeches start at 11.30 at Castlefield Arena. The demo forms up on Liverpool Rd at 13.30 leaving at 14.00 with closing speeches at Piccadilly Gardens at 15.45 – 16.30.
Best wishes,
Janet Newsham – Hazards Campaign/GMHC
Janet Newsham 07734 317158
Hilda Palmer 07929 800240
Hazards Campaigners,
There is a debate on Regulation and safety at #TUC17 this afternoon (Monday 11th) that supports our message. It’s an excellent opportunity to get more Enough is Enough ecards sent to PM and increase the pressure.
Please tweet and retweet this afternoon (Monday 11th) around 2pm onwards using the #tuc17 and retweet @hazardscampaign @jnewsham
Sample Tweets:
#TUC17 Unions tell the government to reverse its deadly deregulation fetish. Let’s all send Theresa May a message https://t.co/Bcz6TuMQJo pic.twitter.com/MPI2vGbA5d
— Rory O’Neill (@hazardseditor) September 11, 2017
CUT IT OUT Union reps at #TUC17 tell the real Theresa May to stop slashing the hard-won red tape that protects us https://t.co/Bcz6TuMQJo pic.twitter.com/xWtXl7YGhK
— Rory O’Neill (@hazardseditor) September 11, 2017
Paste and copy and tweet:
#TUC17 Regulation & Safety: Hazards Campaign calls for an end to deregulation & undermining of health & safety http://www.hazardscampaign.org.uk/postcard
#TUC17 Support Regulation & Safety debate: Send a Hazards Campaign Enough is enough ecard http://www.hazardscampaign.org.uk/postcard
#TUC17 Deregulation is deadly, at Grenfell, at work, everywhere. Enough is enough, stop deregulation http://www.hazardscampaign.org.uk/postcard
Or make up your own and add #tuc17 and the link http://www.hazardscampaign.org.uk/postcard
THANK YOU
Hilda and Janet
