Dan Shears GMB National H&S Department 8th April 2016 Your Health, Your Safety How your H&S is being attacked – and what we’re doing about it

 Political Background ◦ Coalition Government ◦ Conservative Policies  Impact of Policy Changes  How we fight back ◦ The 6 myths that must be challenged ◦ GMB Special Report – ‘Your Health, Your Safety’ ◦ What you can do

 This is a tale of successive governments – both the Coalition and the Tories– have downplayed, under-resourced and undermined health and safety standards in Great Britain  The key issue is not whether we accept this agenda – it has already been imposed upon us  Our challenge is to reverse this decline and renew society’s commitment to safe and healthy work

 2010 Lord Young ‘Common Sense, Common Safety’ - RIDDOR changes; low hazard workplaces  2010 Comprehensive Spending Review - 35% cuts to HSE budget over 3 years  2011 Grayling’s ‘Good Health and Safety: Good for everyone’ – HSE ‘fee for intervention’; proactive inspections cut by 33% -11,000 cut in HSE inspections, 65,000+ in Local Authorities  2012 Lofstedt Review of all H&S law, EU law, and employee blame, with a view to removing burdens from business

 Following Grayling’s new strategy preventative inspections are still allowed in Nuclear & Major Hazard industries, and in: ◦ Construction ◦ Foundries ◦ Waste/ recycling ◦ Glass  But not in equally high risk: ◦ agriculture, quarries, docks, social care, manufacturing, electrical engineering, transport ◦ Post Office, NHS, schools, offices, shops, whole of public sector etc. - now reclassified ‘low risk’

 “I have concluded that in general there is no case for radically altering current health and safety legislation. The regulations place responsibilities on those who create the risk, recognising that they are best placed to decide who to control them and allowing them to do so in a proportionate manner.”  “There is a view across the board that the existing regulatory requirements are broadly right and that regulation has a role to play in preventing injury and ill-health in the workplace. Indeed there is evidence to suggest that proportionate risk management can make good business sense.”

 Red Tape Challenge  No new ‘burdens’ for 3 years on employers of 10 or less  No new regs except from EU and no ‘gold plating’  ‘One in, one out’, and Sunsetting clauses  Sickness Absence Review and ‘Fit Notes’  Attacks on legal aid, access to justice  TU Bill - Attacks on facility time in public sector

 The ‘Rump’ HSE: ◦ Completely reactive in most Sectors ◦ Focused on high societal hazard ◦ Fewer Inspectors in fewer Regional Offices ◦ Further sectoral risk classification ◦ More workers ‘out of scope’ – agency workers, ZHCs, self-employed ◦ Further loss of policymaking expertise

 Nothing the previous or current Government has done will prevent a single work-related injury or death

1. Modern work doesn’t cause much harm 2. H&S is over the top, ‘gone mad’ 3. Most workplaces are ‘low hazard/risk’ 4. Compensation Culture is rife 5. H&S laws and enforcement are a burden on business 6. H&S is only ‘common sense’ so no need for law and enforcement

Myth/Lie No.1: Health and Safety in Britain is one of best in world and very few people now hurt by modern work. THE TRUTH:  Up to 1,500 killed in work-related incidents  Up to 50,000 die due to work-related illnesses  Millions made ill by work EVERY YEAR;  Britain only 30 out of 176 countries for occupational safety and health performance in Maplecroft Risk Index report 2010, 20 th out of 34 OECD countries;  We have more occupational ill-health now than ever, according to occupational health experts.

Myth/Lie No. 2. Health and safety has gone mad, it’s over the top, over enforced, over bureaucratic. TRUTH:  Average business spends 20 hours & £350 a year on risk assessment  Less spot inspection of workplaces– literally once in a lifetime – 98% collapse in LA inspections  Less investigations: only 1 in 9 major and fatal injuries even investigated  Less enforcement action, fewer prosecutions: down 50% over 10 years and in 98% of major injuries there is no enforcement action taken against the employer at all

Myth/Lie No.3: Offices, shops, schools are ‘non- hazardous’. TRUTH:  You’re less likely to be killed or physically injured, but these workers face:  Musculoskeletal risks from working with computers;  Violence from customers and pupils;  A whole host of stress-related illnesses caused by bullying and harassment, by long hours and excessive workloads;  Physical risks from buildings, electricity, asbestos.  Undermines HSWA 1974 applying equally to all workers.

Myth/ Lie No. 4. Compensation culture is rife TRUTH:  Less than 10% of workers made ill, injured and the families of those killed by work, get any sort of compensation at all  Reports show ECLI, Public Liability and Medical Negligence claims going down -only road traffic incident claims up

Myth/Lie No.5: H&S only ‘common sense’, no need for laws and enforcement, firms will do right thing TRUTH:  Workers are made ill and killed every day due to employers failing to manage health and safety  All the evidence shows what works is clear laws, strictly enforced to protect workers from ignorant, non-compliant and often criminally negligent employers  Voluntary schemes and ‘trust the boss’ don’t work!

Myth/Lie No 6 : Health and safety costs too much TRUTH:  Good health and safety saves lives and employers and the state money;  British Chambers of Commerce estimate cost of H&S compliance at £375M per year – fail to deduct savings, e.g. lower insurance premiums, less compensation, less fines, less sickness, lost production or service time.  Nor do they add in the cost of poor health and safety to society  This is estimated at £14-20BN plus all the cost of long latency occupational illnesses, like million each = well over £40 billion EVERY YEAR and who pays?  YOU DO – workers and their families pay in heartbreak and poverty, we/state pay via health and benefit costs but the employers who cause the damage pay less than 25%!

 Wrong to label certain sectors as ‘low-risk’: ◦ Schools – Stress, asbestos and violence ◦ Shops – Slips and trips, manual handling, violence (GMB SafeGuard campaign) ◦ Offices – Stress, MSDs/WRULDs ◦ Just because there aren’t large numbers of deaths in these sectors, doesn’t mean there aren’t serious health and safety issues ◦ Changes to RIDDOR will only take thousands of injuries off the records, and “fiddle the statistics” ◦ Reducing risk assessment will do nothing to help, and will create a ‘two-tier’ health and safety system

 Health and safety needs to be a far higher union priority at this time…  …as we have not ‘cracked it’; it has not ‘gone off the radar’, and the current political changes are not being sufficiently challenged  Indeed, much of what is happening is occurring with little scrutiny, and much right wing applause  We have to act now to stop further damage being inflicted through the back door

 World of work has changed: Zero Hours; agency working – precarious work  Workplace hazards/risks are changing – move to services from manufacturing economy; contracting out in public sector  Regulatory framework has been weakened: ◦ Less regulation ◦ Less enforcement ◦ Less compensation  Special Report gives way forward

 Dedicated RHSO in every GMB Region  Ensure that Regional Health, Safety and Environment forums are organised and take place at least twice per year, directly reporting to Regional Committees  Create a National Health, Safety and Environment forum, populated by delegates elected from Regional Health, Safety and Environment forums, and with the ability to submit a resolution to GMB Congress  Hold a National Health, Safety and Environment conference each year

 Survey our members to find out what your issues and concerns are, and what extra support you need  Link in to the wider equality agenda to help to recruit the next generation of GMB Health, Safety and Environment Representatives, with a particular focus on young members, BME members and women  Better recognise the achievements of our Health and Safety Representatives beyond the annual Safety Representative of the Year award at GMB Congress

 Looking at the opportunities around Health, Safety and Environment as part of the ongoing GMB Branches Review  Looking at simplifying access to training beyond that offered by GMB and the TUC to address specific hazards, issues or concerns.  Seek to appoint more lay Health and Safety Representatives to HSE Industry Advisory Committees (IACs) and sectorial forums

 Refresh and update the GMB Health and Safety Representatives’ Handbook as part of the GMB Workplace Organisers’ Toolkit  Ensure that all new GMB representatives complete basic Health and Safety training as part of their induction programme  Make the GMB Inspection Report Form available to complete online using tablets and smartphones.  Develop simple one page ‘quick guides’ on key health, safety and environment topics

 Publish new guidance and case studies on organising in the workplace using health, safety and environment issues.  Use new technology and new avenues, such as Twitter, GMB TV on YouTube, and podcasts to communicate developments and campaigning activity.  Ensure that the GMB Website on Health, Safety and the Environment is regularly updated and has the most up-to-date information possible.  Publish a GMB Health, Safety and Environment newsletter every month.

 Deliver a campaign to reassert Health and Safety Representatives’ Rights and reinvigorate inspection activity.  Develop new campaigns and guidance on emerging issues such as mental health, bullying & harassment, nanotechnology and occupational health, particularly around the aging workforce.

 Encourage and train GMB Health and Safety Representatives to make use of regional and national media communication channels  Co-ordinate GMB activity around International Workers’ Memorial Day  Regularly lobby parliament to ensure that health, safety and environment issues retain a high profile and remain in the public eye.

 Use the real figures and give a clear picture  Workplace meetings  Branch meetings  GMB Congress motions  TUC, Labour Party and beyond

 Largest ever GMB Survey – 364,000 printed  We need your feedback – what you want and how you want it  Online at: ◦

 Two pronged approach: 1. Defend members health and safety in your workplaces 2. Campaign inside and outside workplace and union against the cuts  Use Workers’ Memorial Day and evidence from GMB, TUC, Hazards Campaign and magazine to challenge the lies, act locally and build up a massive grassroots movement into a national campaign against the biggest threat to our health and safety for years.

 Unions make work safer & healthier - half as many incidents & illness in organised workplace with safety rep- use it to recruit and retain members  Revitalise union organisation in workplaces, use all rights as safety rep to protect members H&S – to be consulted, given information, to do quarterly inspections, to investigate incidents and ill-health, involvement in Risk Assessments, to monitor injury and ill-health stats  Build case for reactive inspection/intervention by Inspectors when you have exhausted all internal procedures, make complaints about breaches of law with care: HSE -

National Level:  Lobbies of Parliament  Briefing MPs, Councillors etc  Advice / Roadshows to Regions  Use Workers’ Memorial Day to raise profile  Make sure we use the real figures – 20,000 deaths, not 150

Workplace Level  Re-enforce your role: ◦ Inspections, ◦ Investigations, ◦ Advice,  Holding the employer accountable through the workplace H&S Committee  Recruit, organise and defend your rights, before they are lost

 You will make the critical difference

 For more info: ◦ E: ◦ E: ◦  Any Questions?