UNIONREPS.org.uk
The TUC has launched a new web service, specially developed for union representatives and stewards. This new site will help reps from different workplaces and different unions, to network online and learn from each other’s experiences. The site also provides news, information and resources to help reps to do their jobs, as well as a fortnightly e-newsletter.
Food flavour wrecks lungs
Food flavouring wrecked my lungs
US foodworkers have been disabled by “popcorn lung”, a potentially fatal condition caused by a common food flavouring. For 10 years this seemed to be just a US problem. Then came Yorkshire factory worker Martin Muir, 38, who tests revealed has the lungs of an 80-year-old man.
When agency worker Martin Muir (right) was offered a full-time job by flavourings firm Firmenich in 2003, he thought he was lucky. “It was alright. I could see I could get further up if I put my head down and got on,” he recalled.
Within three years, exposure to an artificial butter flavouring used in thousands of products including frozen dinners, baked goods, home baking products, crisps, snacks, sweets, butter substitutes, sprays and oils and other processed foods, had cost the father of four his marriage, his health and his job. “When you do lung function tests it gives you a lung age. I come out about 80 years old,” Martin said. “If I run upstairs, I’m out of breath. I was fit as a butcher’s dog before, I’ve always been healthy. They reckon I’ve lost 25-30 per cent of my lung capacity. It doesn’t sound like a lot but when you try do anything you realise it is.”
In December 2005, the firm, based in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, referred him to a chest physician, who confirmed he had bronchiolitis obliterans, a normally rare but sometimes life-threatening condition. The work link was only spotted at all because he was by chance referred to one of the few UK specialists familiar with the US cases.
Bullying and Harassment
Workplace bullying can be defined as offensive, intimidating, malicious, insulting or humiliating behaviour, abuse of power or authority which attempts to undermine an individual or group of employees and which may cause them to suffer stress.
The 2006 TUC safety representatives survey found that one in three (33 per cent) safety representatives identified bullying as a problem in their workplace that was linked to stress. And workplace bullying is widespread, according to findings from a survey in 2006 by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in association with MORI and Kingston Business School. The survey identified that one fifth of all UK employees have experienced some form of bullying or harassment over the last two years. The survey also reported that the groups most likely to become victims of bullying and harassment are black and Asian employees, women and people with a disability. Nearly one third (29 per cent) of Asian employees or those from other ethnic groups report having experienced some form of bullying or harassment, compared with 18 per cent of white employees. Employees with disabilities are at least twice as likely to report having experienced one or more forms of bullying and harassment (37 per cent), compared with non-disabled employees (18 per cent).
Each year there is a National Ban Bullying at Work Day which is organised by the Andrea Adams Trust and supported by the TUC. Further details
Check out the USDAW Freedom from Fear campaign post here..
Links open in new windows
TUC: Bullying at Work – Guidance for Safety Representatives
Lone Working
We live in a 24-7 world. Care workers, shopworkers, maintenance workers, most jobs, can require people to be left alone and isolated. It can be dangerous. Workers have been murdered. Health, postal, emergency and shopworkers are frequently attacked. Injured workers have been undiscovered for hours. The law should protect you … make sure it does.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) says lone workers are “those who work by themselves without close or direct supervision.” Three broad groups of workers are at risk, those: Working alone on site; working away from base; and homeworkers.
There are no specific legal duties on employers in relation to lone working, however the general duty of employers to maintain safe working arrangements under the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act applies.
HSE advises employers that they have a legal duty to notify and consult with safety representatives about the jobs of employees who work alone.
Links
The links below open in new windows.
Hazards lone working factsheet
London Hazards Centre Factsheet
HSE Leaflet Working alone in safety: controlling the risks of solitary work
Slips, trips and falls
Slips and trips are the most common cause of major injuries at work. They occur in almost all workplaces, 95 per cent of major slips result in broken bones and they can also be the initial causes for a range of other accident types.
According to the HSE, on average, slips and trips:
- are 33 per cent of all reported major injuries
- are 20 per cent of injuries of more than three days to employees
- cause two fatalities per year
- are 50 per cent of all reported accidents to members of the public
- cost £512 million to employers per year
- cost £133 million to the health service per year
- cause incalculable human costs
- Slips and trips accidents account for the highest number of major injuries and occur across all industry sectors.In addition, according to the HSE, 46 people died in 2005/06 and 3,351 suffered a major injury as a result of a fall from height in the workplace. Falls from height occur throughout industry.
Links
HSE slips and trips pages http://www.hse.gov.uk/slips/index.htm
On-line assessment tool http://www.hsesat.info/
There is no safe reason to discriminate on age grounds
Not Dead Yet!
We all have different strengths and weaknesses, young and old. And properly designed work should be safe 
and healthy whoever is doing it. So why are older workers told they are no longer up to the job? Hazards editor Rory O’Neill spells out the measures necessary to deliver healthier workplaces for all, regardless of age.
Not dead yet
Executive summary
• Improving health and longevity mean the great majority of workers have no significant health impediments to prevent work up to the age of 65 and for many, where they wish, beyond.
• Workplace health and safety considerations are not a valid reason to prevent older workers continuing in work.
• Age discrimination legislation can and should be used to challenge dismissal or failure to recruit or train older workers on spurious “health and safety” grounds.
• If government targets for increased employment of older workers are to be met, it will require new “work ability” approaches from employers, including occupational health and safety programmes and workplace level “age management strategies”. These programmes should attract government support.
• There is a case for introducing an explicit legal duty on employers under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, requiring assessment of jobs to see that job tasks take proper account of the physical capabilities of workers, with a particular focus on older workers and any possible adaptations, job redesign, changes in work hours or schedules or reassignment that might be beneficial. The UK already has a similar safety regulation tailored to younger workers. France has a law requiring periodic review of measures by employers to address the impact of physical strains at work on the employability of older workers, with an explicit requirement to remedy problems identified.
• Age management strategies must target “ageing” rather than just “older” workers. Planning occupational health interventions and devising job redesign or alternative work in good time, with policies looking at workers in the 45+ age group, will provide greater scope for creating suitable and healthy work transitions. Career structures should allow a shift to more suitable work, where necessary or desirable.
• Extension to older workers of the “right to ask” for flexible working arrangements would enable older workers to consider alternative work patterns better suited to their capabilities and responsibilities, including the possibility of “sunsetting”, a gradual reduction in work up to retirement.
• Workers should not be denied safety or vocational training because of their age.
• Payment schemes based on productivity should not lead to unhealthy work rates, or work patterns and speeds that disadvantage older workers. Pension schemes should not result in pressure to work longer hours in the years preceding retirement.
• Older workers in the UK are more likely to be economically inactive on grounds of disability than in most other developed nations, suggesting far greater emphasis must be placed on providing support, “reasonable adjustments” and other measures to accommodate people with disabilities in the workplace. Disability discrimination legislation must be effectively applied.
• Older workers are less of a sickness problem to employers than the workforce as a whole. They are more likely to take periods of long-term sick leave, however, so sickness policies should allow time off to manage chronic health problems.
• The Health and Safety Executive must be provided additional resources to develop advice, guidance and enforcement approaches tailored to ensuring the continued productive and healthy employment of older workers.
• Impact of work on the health and employability of older women workers is particularly neglected. Ensuring statutory, research, employer and union strategies are age and gender sensitive is crucial to ensuring the “work ability” of older women workers.
• The impact of health problems related to ageing, for example hearing loss and osteoarthritis, can be minimised if health and safety laws are observed and adequately enforced, minimising any work-related component or exacerbation of the condition.
• The UK’s long hours culture and the intensification of work, with fewer workers expected to do more, is detrimental to both health and productivity. The cumulative harm caused by overwork is likely to disadvantage older workers. Employers should introduce sensible working hours practices, adhering to the Working Time Regulations, and should eliminate excessive work rates. The health and safety enforcement agencies should take action to ensure harmful and excessive working hours and work pace are eliminated.
• Workplace injury and ill-health rates in older workers need explicit attention from statutory agencies including the Health and Safety Executive. Most of the major causes of work-related mortality and morbidity in the UK are more common in older workers. Work hazards lead to tens of thousands of premature deaths every year.
• Occupational health is not just about the health of the worker. It is about the right to healthy and productive retirement. Poor working conditions are stealing healthy retirement years from workers. The three top causes of death in the UK – cancer, chronic respiratory disease and circulatory disease – all have a substantial, preventable, occupational component. Occupational health research and policy must not be limited to ensuring work remains healthy. Both must ensure full consideration is giving to minimising the impact of occupation-related injury and disability in retirement.
• The UK has dropped down Europe’s ranking from being the nation whose workers believed they were most likely to be up to their job at age 60, to sixth behind Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
• Employers are not doing enough to accommodate effectively an ageing workforce. More than 1 million workers are struggling to find employment because of their age. Employers are not providing the necessary training and flexibility to retain their existing older workers.
• A new emphasis on occupational health, integrated into board level strategy decisions, is necessary to ensure long-term health problems caused by work are not treated as “tomorrow’s problem”. The problem is today; it is the price paid by the company, the worker and society as a whole that comes later.
• Effective implementation of workplace age management strategies will required training of managers and supervisors and a new mind set, focused on maintaining the positive contribution of older workers.
• Physical fitness in older workers is strongly related to continued fitness to work. Employers can support older workers remaining fit and healthy by providing time, resources and access to facilities for participation in healthy activities inside and outside the workplace.
• Unions should develop policy on occupational health and safety and the ageing worker. At workplace level, older workers’ health and safety should be raised at workplace health and safety committees, and should be discussed with members. Terms and conditions negotiations should consider the impact on older workers.
• Retired workers should not be neglected. Occupational health research must take full account of excess mortality and morbidity in former workers. Unions should investigate measures to maintain contact with retired members so the real extent of work-related health problems are recognised and acted upon, and affected retired members are provided the necessary support and compensation.
Not dead yet
At retirement age, the great majority of us are in full working order. We are living longer, and we are healthier longer. The average person in the UK can expect almost a decade in good health after the age of 65. Work, for most, is something older workers are willing and able up to and sometimes beyond the usual retirement age. Sometimes its only prejudice that stands in the way.
A 2005 report for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) looked at “the common ‘myths’ about older workers and provides, where possible, evidence and arguments that aim to dispel inaccurate perceptions about older adults and demonstrate that health and safety cannot be used as an ‘excuse’ to justify the exclusion of older workers.”
‘Facts and misconceptions about age, health status and employability’ concludes “there is no health and safety justification to exclude older workers from the workforce. Organisations will benefit from efforts to maintain the ability to work of all employees at any age and the adoption and development of flexible retirement practices that retain older workers longer.”
But many firms are not making that effort. ‘Ready, willing and able’, an August 2006 TUC report, revealed that more than a million workers from Britain’s post-war baby boom generation are struggling to find employment because of their age.
Employers are reluctant to recruit older workers or provide the necessary training and flexibility to retain those they already have despite their desire to continue working, the TUC said in its report. According to the TUC, more than a third of the 2.6 million people aged between 50 and 65 who are unemployed or economically inactive would prefer to be working. Some 250,000 said they were looking for a job while another 750,000 said they would like to have one.
The report attacks the idea that the post-war baby boomers are opting to retire early. It says only a third of those who retire early do so entirely voluntarily.
The TUC’s deputy general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said: “Most baby boomers are not retiring early to cruise round the world or go bungee jumping. They are being dumped out of work and on to the scrapheap and are scraping by on benefits or small work pensions.”
Work injury forces octagenarian’s retirement
A Sheffield octogenarian has had to give up work after sustaining a serious workplace injury. John Moffatt, 80, received a £5,000 out-of-court settlement from his former employer in November 2006 after suffering the shoulder injury at work.
Mr Moffatt was working part-time as a general handyman for Flex-Seal Couplings in Barnsley at the time of accident, in January 2005. His boot became caught as he manoeuvred a hydraulic pump truck full of empty pallets, causing him to fall heavily. He said: “I was in immediate pain and felt badly shaken and dazed. I tried to pull myself up but was unable to do so because of the pain so had to sit for about 10 minutes before managing to get myself up and see a colleague who took me to the first aid room.”
A series of hospital visits determined Mr Moffatt had suffered muscle damage known as a rotator cuff tear and at some point may need a shoulder replacement. He was also told that he would never regain the full use of his arm. He now needs assistance around the house with things such as DIY and decorating. He commented: “The thing I miss the most is not being able to go ballroom dancing with my wife as this is something we have both done for many years and thoroughly enjoy.”
His legal adviser, Lynne Parker, of personal injury firm Irwin Mitchell, said: “Mr Moffatt really enjoyed the continued independence of working and has been robbed of the chance of being able to work until the age of 80 as he had planned. He was never given any training in respect of use of the pump truck or manual handling.” She added: “Employers need to realise the duty of care they owe to their entire workforce, be they full or part time employees the duty is the same.”
Myths and misconceptions
HSE’s misconceptions report(1) adds detail on the “common ‘myths’ about age, health status and employment” that might be used to justify discrimination: Myth Chronological age determines health and age brings illness and disease.
Myth Getting older is associated with a loss of cognitive capacity.
Myth Older workers have less physical strength and endurance.
Myth Older workers tend to have poorer sensory abilities such as sight and hearing.
Myth Older workers have more time off sick.
Myth Older workers have difficulty adapting to change.
Myth Older workers find it hard to learn new information making their knowledge and skills outdated.
Myth Older workers have more accidents in the workplace.
Myth Older workers are less productive.
Work capability
The government’s October 2005 ‘Health, work and well-being’ strategy (Hazards 93), includes among its objectives “working with employers to make changes in the workplace necessary to allow people to work to a later age.” It adds that among indicators of strategy success would be “people being able to work longer if they wish.”
A new law barring age discrimination in the workplace law should help. Safety minister Lord Hunt said the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, which came into effect on 1 October 2006, would ensure older workers are not denied the opportunity to stay in work. He said: “Research has shown that being out of work is bad for your health, but more importantly being in work is positively good for your health. That is why the new age discrimination laws are so important.”
First findings of the European Foundation’s 2005 survey, published in November 2006, show that workers saying they believed they would be able to do the same job when 60 was at 63.5 per cent in the UK, just above the EU15 average of 61 per cent and the expanded EU25 figure of 58.9 per cent. This represents a significant slip down the rankings. The UK now trails behind Germany (73.6 per cent), The Netherlands (71.2 per cent), Sweden (69.7 per cent), Denmark (68.8 per cent) and Finland (65.2 per cent).
Of the EU15 countries investigated in the previous 2000 European Working Conditions Survey, UK workers were the most likely to believe they’d be able to do the same job at 60 years of age (60.3 per cent compared to an EU15 average of 53.9 per cent). By 2005, the UK had fallen to sixth in the EU15 ranking, in the middle rather than at the head of the pack. The European Working Conditions Survey 2005 involved interviews with almost 30,000 workers in Europe, including over 1,000 in the UK.
And a September 2005 UK study by the Employers’ Forum on Age found that almost half the workforce would be happy to work until they are 70, but only one in five thought they would be fit enough to do so.
It is the government’s intention to see more older people in work. Launching ‘Is work good for your health and well-being?’, a September 2006 Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) report on the net positive impact of working on health, DWP said its welfare reforms include reducing “the number of people who need to rely on incapacity benefits by 1 million, and help 1 million older workers and more than 300,000 lone parents into work.”
Much more Facts & Figures on Hazards website, where you can subcribe to the magazine, 
Myth for june ‘08
Myth: Adults can’t put plasters on children’s cuts
The reality
We’ve often heard of teachers, volunteers and carers being told to ask parents for permission, or even requiring parents to drive over and put the plaster on themselves. This persistent myth causes a lot of unnecessary hassle and worry.
There is no rule that says a responsible adult can’t put a plaster on a child’s minor cut. Some children do have an allergy to normal plasters. If you know a child is allergic you can use the Hypo-allergenic type of plaster. The important thing is to clean and cover the cut to stop it getting infected.
The role of the safety representative
Safety representatives are appointed by trade unions to represent their members on health and safety issues. In some workplaces, they have agreed to represent the entire workforce.
HSE
The Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977 set out their legal functions.
Very good site for reps becoming H&S reps.
both links open in new windows.
Safety reps
Union safety reps have a dramatic, positive impact on safety at work – and the more training they get, the safer the workplace. Evidence shows that workplaces with union safety reps and joint union-management safety committees have major injury rates less than half of those without.
Safety reps’ rights and functions include a legal right to: Represent employees in discussions with the employer on health, safety or welfare and in discussions with HSE or other enforcing authorities; investigate hazards and dangerous occurrences; investigate complaints; carry out inspections of the workplace and inspect relevant documents; attend safety committees; be paid for time spent on carrying out their functions, and to undergo training.
Safety reps in union recognised workplaces have the legal right to paid time off for union approved safety training. HSE’s evaluation of the impact of safety reps training found the more training a safety rep underwent, the greater the positive impact at work.
The legal rights of safety Representatives can be found in the “Brown Book” which is the regulations, code of practice and guidance on safety representatives.
European Health and Safety Week
European Health and Safety Week takes place in October each year and is designed to raise awareness of health and safety.
The European Agency for Safety and Health describes the week as: “Aimed at people in organisations, companies and workplaces of all sizes and sectors. Everybody involved in occupational safety and health matters is invited to take part, especially safety and health institutions and occupational insurance organisations, trade unions and employers’ organisations, companies, managers, employees and safety representatives.”
Health and Safety Week 2007 will take place between 22 – 26 October. Make sure you put this date in your diary now!
The main theme will be musculoskeletal disorders. Across the European Union’s 27 member states 25 per cent of workers complain of backache and 23 per cent report muscular pains. It adds that musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are the biggest cause of absence from work in almost all member states. ‘Lighten the load’, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work’s 2007 campaign to tackle MSDs in the workplace, spells out an integrated management approach with three key elements. First, employers, employees and government need to work together to tackle MSDs. Secondly, any action should address the ‘whole load on the body’, which covers all the stresses and strains, environmental factors such as cold working conditions, and the load being carried. Thirdly, employers need to manage the retention, rehabilitation and return to work of employees
The week is run by the European Agency for Safety and Health who have published a site full of news, materials and activities. In the UK the week is being coordinated by the Health and Safety Executive.
The TUC will be undertaking a number of initiatives during the week.
The Wednesday of European Health and Safety Week is traditionally National Inspection Day when all safety representatives are encouraged to inspect their workplace
About
Is the main union that represents the shop workers in Stores & Supermarkets in Dundee and the rest of the UK
This Blog-site is for members of USDAW. And workers who would like to join USDAW.
About your trade union, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. It looks at the union at work, taking up members’ problems and negotiating with employers, in order to improve members’ wages and conditions.
