I recently attended a one day health and safety conference organised by the South West TUC. There were around 100 delegates, mostly health and safety reps from a range of unions. The SWTUC is supportive of the idea of developing networks of Health & Safety reps, and this was the second conference it has organised. Such networks exist around the country, some being campaigning groups on specific issues, such as asbestos or RSI, others have a wider campaigning remit.

The conference was a welcome opportunity for individual reps to meet with others, share experience, and discuss strategy on various issues. Once H&S reps have been through the TUC or individual union courses, they tend to be left to their own devices in their workplace. Their work is rarely, if ever coordinated by their own unions. They face a difficult task, despite the legal rights they have.

One of the speakers at the conference ran us through the ‘highlights’ of the TUC’s latest H&S reps survey, which gives a good picture of the degree of H&S organisation, and the difficulties that reps face. There were 3,500 responses.

22% of H&S reps (answering the survey) are never automatically consulted by employers on H&S matters. Even when they ask to be consulted only 37% are consulted frequently thereafter. Only 29% are automatically consulted frequently.

Despite the legal obligation to have a written health & safety policy, 7% of companies have none. Of the reps unable to attend courses, 25% cited management refusal to release them, despite their legal right to training.

A massive 44% of reps said that they were never consulted by management in relation to workplace risk assessments. Only 28% were satisfied with their involvement in risk assessments.

H&S legislation provides reps with the right to make quarterly safety inspections of their workplace. Despite this legal right only 35% of respondents carry out 3-4 inspections, with 16% carrying out more than 4. 28% had conducted only one inspection, 21% had carried out 2, over the past year.

How long do reps spend on their duties? 53% spend an hour per week or less on H&S work. Why is this? Management rarely provides them with the facility time, whilst also failing to account for their H&S responsibilities in their job description. They are often expected to do 100% of their work and the H&S activities on top!

There is much discussion in the trade union movement about the extension of rights for reps. Whilst we are obviously in favour of that, the fact is that H&S union organisation is not strong enough to force employers to carry out their statutory duties under current law. The drastic change in the balance of power in the workplace, resulting from the defeats the unions suffered from the 1980’s onwards has led to a productivity drive, cuts in jobs, and a general intensification of work pressure on shrinking staff numbers (what has been described as “the brutalisation of work”).

This is reflected in the survey results when you look at the major concerns of reps. The ‘top’ spot goes to overwork/stress with 61%, RSI comes second with 38%, DSE (Display Screen Equipment) 36%. The main reasons given for overwork/stress are: workload levels 76%, staff cuts 57%, change (reorganisation) 53%, long hours 34%, bullying 33%.

This situation has not been helped by the inability or failure of the unions to resist job cuts (in some cases they have accepted management rationale for making them). It is hardly rational to accept job cuts and to expect management to find the means of cutting pressure on workers.

Amongst the recommendations of the TUC accompanying the 2006 survey we find:

• “Employers must be encouraged to take stress more seriously. There should be more use and enforcement of existing laws and HSE stress management standards…”
• “Employers should remove the barriers that are preventing some safety reps from attending TUC and trade union courses.”
• HSC should address employers’ failure to consult generally and more specifically about risk assessments, and the difficulty of getting time off.
• Existing laws on consultation should be enforced.
• “Employers must be encouraged to take the problem of risk assessments more seriously by rigorous enforcement of the laws”
• Any new laws on worker involvement must ensure employers are obliges to consult safety reps about risk assessments.
• Government, HSC and HSC must reverse the recent reduction in workplace safety inspections.
• Enforcement authorities must ensure that inspectors liaise fully with safety reps.
• Existing laws should be enforced regarding consultation of safety reps on the introduction of new measures in the workplace

Obviously we should demand the application of existing law and prosecution of companies that flout it. However, these injunctions are not likely to get a positive response from a business-friendly government which supports cuts in the HSE and reductions in inspections.

It is doubtful that the main concerns expressed by reps in the survey, which are really nothing more than the result of increased exploitation of labour, can be addressed purely in relation to health and safety legislation. They can only be fully addressed through a strategy which aims to rebuild the power of unions in the workplace.

Health and safety and ‘industrial’ issues should not be viewed as separate issues. Take this example from my own experience. After the 1994 signallers’ dispute, Network Rail managed to remove a number of jobs in various signal boxes around the Western Zone. After the dispute, the staff in many boxes chose to go on 12 hour shifts, largely because it gave them more time out of work. Where there was only one member of staff present they worked 12 hours without a break away from the work station, managing with whatever snatched minutes they could find in between trains.

The RMT Zonal Council was able to have jobs reinstated, utilising the H&S implications of low staffing levels. Winning these back was part of a conscious strategy by the Zonal Council, which, formally speaking, was not an arena for discussing H&S. The reinstated posts enabled proper breaks and took a lot of pressure out of the job for the panels affected. (Mind you, a couple of panel boxes refused extra jobs on the grounds that it would cut their overtime!)

The problem is that if a union accepts the need to help management ‘shape up for competition’, then the inevitable consequence is increased pressure on workers, as more work is loaded onto fewer people.

A good H&S rep will utilise all manner of arguments in endeavouring to get management to take H&S seriously. It will undoubtedly cost a company less to prevent accidents than the cost of somebody sitting at home ‘unproductively’ after they have had a workplace accident. However, many companies operate on the principles than they would rather save a penny today, even if it costs them a pound later.

H&S reps carry out a very frustrating job because they often find themselves hitting their head against a brick wall. Unless there are punitive legal sanctions against employers who fail to carry out their legal obligations, then many of them will simply ignore the law, or frustrate the efforts of the reps. It’s a job which requires very dogged individuals who will simply not take ‘no’ for an answer.

You can get results by unfailingly pressing management to carry out their legal obligations. When I was doing a TUC H& S stage 2 course, I did a project relating to DSE assessments and H&S management. Using a survey of staff I discovered that the failure to carry our DSE assessments (a legal obligation) was even worse than I thought, with 50% of respondents having never had an assessment. Using the threat of writing to the HSE to expose the company’s breach of their legal obligations, we were able to set up a working party which completely redesigned the management of H&S, gave responsibility to identified individual managers, informed them of their responsibility (and their legal liability) and set in place a training programme. A crash programme of DSE Assessments addressed the backlog, not as quickly as we would have liked, but nevertheless progress was made.

Of course, not every company would have recognised their failure and addressed it, since it is well known that the HSE is very weak at pressing employers to carry out their legal responsibilities, unless that failure has life-threatening implications. Indeed the financial crisis of the HSE is deepening, with another round of cuts in the pipeline (another 250-300 jobs by March 2008). According to the TUC the HSE will have lose 17% of its staff from 2002 to 2008.

A TUC report says:

“Around 85 per cent of major injuries reported to HSE are never investigated (and there are known to be large numbers that never even get reported),” the report says: “There is only so much that the 500 or so inspectors in HSE’s Field Operations Division (FOD) can achieve. This means that very serious career-ending accidents go unpunished simply because there is no one to gather the evidence. The number of prosecutions is now half what it was in the early 1990s – this simply means that more employers are getting away with it, not that they are more compliant.”

This is not an organisation we can look to for our salvation, even if we have to continue to place demands on it, as the ‘policing’ authority. We have to look to our own organisation.

Ultimately, management will take H&S seriously only if it has to take union organisation seriously because of its strength in a workplace. Reversing the balance of power in the workplace between union and management and developing a strategy to resist staff cuts is the best means of addressing H&S. Of course, it is not a question of waiting until we have rebuilt our strength in this or that workplace. H&S reps have to do what they can under the existing conditions they face. But without recognising that H&S is part of the general struggle between union and management over exploitation of our labour then the rep will be like the boy with his finger in the dyke. Ultimately unions have to be prepared to address H&S issues with industrial action, since rarely are H&S problems related solely to individual workers. They are more often collective issues. We do have a right not to carry out a job if we think it is unsafe, yet under existing law, you risk the sack if you do so. Only collective action can prevent the victimisation of individuals.

There has been within the unions a significant move away from the ‘partnership’ approach. However, this has yet to be translated into a change of outlook and practice in the sphere of health and safety. Whilst H&S reps will obviously strive to get management to cooperate in relation to the application of H&S law, we should never forget for one moment that we do not have shared interests. The drive for increased profitability, especially in those sectors open to international competition, inevitably will have an impact on work intensity and thus the health and safety of staff. We must use the law to protect our members where we can, but without resistance to intensification of work then the reps cannot be expected to stop the relentless growth of levels of stress, overwork and so on. That means abandoning the outlook which sees the role of the unions as being in alliance with employers to achieve ‘success’ in the marketplace. We cannot collaborate with increased exploitation of our labour without our members suffering the consequences in relation to H&S.

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