We didn't vote to die at work

SPECIAL REPORTS
Regulations save lives and jobs

Overkill
It is your neck on the block • Clegg and Cameron’s war on workers Government ministers from the prime minister to the safety minister are queuing up to say safety is bad for business. But LibDem leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has trumped them all, assuring businesses he’ll make sure safety inspectors are not “breathing down your necks.”
Hazards 116, October-December 2011

Safety in the pits
Will Britain’s coal mines soon be more deadly than China’s? When five miners died this autumn in two separate incidents in 12 days, conditions in Britain’s coal mines briefly caught the public gaze. But Hazards editor Rory O’Neill says the media failed to spot the lack of safety oversight underground that has seen fatality rates in UK coal mines at their highest levels in 50 years.
Hazards 116, October-December 2011

TUC calls for action
Day of action on health and safety • 28 April 2012 Workplace health and safety has become the government’s favourite whipping boy. Safety rights and enforcement are being dismantled. TUC head of safety Hugh Robertson says unions and safety campaigners must expose, discredit and take action to undermine these deadly developments.
Hazards 116, October-December 2011

Where’s that watchdog?
HSE says talk to the machine – we say ‘no thanks’ Not only is the cash-starved, hands-tied Health and Safety Executive (HSE) disappearing, it is increasingly disappearing from view. It has blitzed contact telephone numbers and email addresses from the HSE website. And most injury reporting and official safety advice has now been consigned to the web too.
Hazards 116 October-December 2011

Firm favourites
Government would rather listen to business than reason In the four months after announcing in March 2011 the government’s strategy to dismantle workplace safety protections, DWP minister Chris Grayling met with 10 separate industry bodies to flesh out his plans. But he still cannot find any time in his diary for FACK, the organisation for those like Linda Whelan (above) who have been bereaved by work.
Hazards 115, July-September 2011

Where's the law?
It’s work, not the Wild West: Global warning on ‘deregulation fever’ Deadly employers will be the sole beneficiaries of a business-driven trend towards less health and safety regulation in workplaces worldwide, trades unions worldwide are warning.
Hazards report, May 2011

Body blow
Government jettisons your safety, sickness, compensation and job rights The UK government is not content with dismantling the system that keeps you safe and healthy at work. It is also punching holes in the safety net that could provide welfare or compensation when you do get sick and redress when you are fired, abused or victimised at work. And, to the delight of the business lobby, it is ignoring crucial evidence that safety regulation pays, saves lives and spurs job creation.
Hazards report, May 2011

The real job killers
Regulations don’t kill jobs; lack of regulations kill workers Pesky safety regulations and meddling inspectors are bringing the economy to its knees and stifling job creation, or so the business lobby says. But there’s a couple of large flies in their deregulatory ointment - the arguments are bogus and the statistics behind them are rigged. Regulation and enforcement are good for workers and good for jobs.
Hazards report, February 2011

Dangerous li(v)es
Removing safety protection is inviting the ultimate capital crime The Health and Safety Executive has been hobbled by an unprecedented and savage funding cut. Safety rules are being relaxed. And the government says it’s all happening in the name of common sense. Don’t you believe it – it’s a political project driven by the business lobby and built around dangerous lies. Hazards explodes the myth that health and safety regulation and enforcement is a ‘burden’ on business.
Hazards report, November 2010

Features

Screw you
Tory bully boy Chris Grayling doesn’t like you. In fact, he’s out to get you. The employment minister has neutered a safety watchdog which even before the cuts managed to investigate just 1 in every 19 major injuries suffered at work. And now he’s handing over policy making to anti-regulation business bigwigs, warns Hazards.
Hazards 114, April-June 2011

Deregulation is really a workplace death wish
A UK government-commissioned review of health and safety, which will report to ministers in autumn 2011, is not really about changing the law. It’s about risk envy – our competitors don’t all abide by strict rules governing safety and decency at work, so why should the UK? And it is a topic on which Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, charged with undertaking the review, is an acknowledged expert.
Hazards 'green jobs' blog, 30 May 2011

Life support?
After Dorothy Wright watched her son Mark die from horrific injuries suffered in a workplace fireball, she at least expected jus tice. But she says blundering officials failed her family and warns a government “hell-bent” on slashing safety protections will consign more families to the same fate.
Hazards 113, January-March 2011

Is HSE finished?
It doesn’t have the money to do its job, enforcement is already at a record low and it is banned from conducting any health and safety campaigns. As disillusioned Health and Safety Executive (HSE) staff queue to leave, Hazards editor Rory O’Neill asks what future can there be for the beleaguered watchdog.
Hazards 113, January-March 2011

Rotten example
The UK’s offshore safety system has been hailed as a model of good practice. But US critics say they don’t want it over there, because it contains very risky assumptions – including an allowable death rate of one in every thousand workers.
Hazards 113, January-March 2011

Get shirty
A safety minister who is determined to see the Health and Safety Executive axed. A government that lops 35 per cent off HSE’s funding. We are living and working in dangerous times. If unions, sick and injured workers and bereaved relatives don’t stand up for safety, no-one else will.
Hazards 112, October-December 2010

Don’t base policy on deadly lies
Wherever you go, business lobby groups are trotting out cookie-cutter reports claiming businesses are folding, jobs are being lost, and the economy is being devastated. And the cause? The burden of regulation, with health, safety and environmental rules always targeted as top irritants.
Hazards 'green jobs' blog, 11 November 2010

Abuse of power
As BP, until this year Britain’s biggest company, reels from the impact of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, the UK government embarks on an unprecedented push to impose the deadly BP business model across the whole nation.
Hazards 111, July-September 2010

A neutered watchdog
Workplace safety has been undermined by the collapse of the Health and Safety Executive’s investigation and enforcement role. Academics Steve Tombs and Dave Whyte warn this “regulatory surrender” means even amputations are unlikely to be investigated and prosecutions are now a rarity.
Hazards 111, July-September 2010

Slash and burn
Securing safe and healthy workplaces requires good regulations, proper enforcement and decent rights, unions have told an official enquiry. But the government seems intent on axing lifesaving protections regardless of the evidence.
Hazards 111, July-September 2010

Who pays?
The British Chambers of Commerce is targeting health and safety laws because it says they cost business billions. Only it’s not true. And Hazards reveals the real cost of business neglecting safety is borne almost entirely by workers and the public purse, with companies evading the blame and the bill.
Hazards 106, April-June 2009

Resources

Vote to die T-shirts and posters
T-shirts – Adult sizes s, m, l, xl, xxl, xxxl: £6 (UK postage free), Child (ages 5-13): £4. Posters 'Job killer' and 'We didn't vote to die at work' (free).
Details from the Hazards Campaign, Windrush Millennium Centre, 70 Alexandra Road, Manchester M16 7WD, UK. See the latest Vote to die poster

Facebook
'We didn't vote to die at work' Facebook group

US report shows ‘Prevention Pays’
A report from a US safety group pulls together arguments demonstrating that good safety standards aren’t just in the interests of workers, there’s a big pay off for employers too. ‘Prevention pays: Solutions to help workers and businesses thrive,’ published by San Francisco-based Worksafe, tallies the costs – human, financial, and social – of failures to protect workers’ health and safety on the job.
Worksafe news release • Prevention pays: Solutions to help workers and businesses thrive, Worksafe, September 2011 [pdf] • Risks 522 • 10 September 2011

Britain: IOSH ‘Life savings’ campaign
British businesses are losing their competitive edge because of a failure to tackle the risks of injury and illness in the workplace, says the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) has concluded. Its ‘Life Savings’ campaign is illustrated by examples of employers saving millions by making work safer.
IOSH Life Savings campaign • Risks 508 • 4 June 2011

The case for health and safety
A new TUC report reveals that more than 20,000 people in the UK are killed prematurely by their work every year. In The Case for Health and Safety, TUC calls on the government to: ignore calls from the business lobby to reduce regulation and enforcement; champion the issue and appoint a government ‘tsar’ for health and safety; use the UK network of 150,000 trained union health and safety reps to even greater effect; and support the work of the HSE and local authorities in protecting people at work.
TUC news release • The Case for Health and Safety, TUC, 7 September 2010 • [pdf]

Fighting the cuts to health and safety
Health and safety funding is under threat from the cuts being proposed by the coalition government. This TUC briefing explains why this must not happen.
TUC briefing

How to lobby your MP on health and safety
A TUC guide to lobbying your MP at his or her surgery on the cuts proposed to the funding of the health and safety work performed by HSE and local authorities.
TUC guide

Hazards Campaign
Vote to die webpages

Face the FACKS - DVD
'Face the FACKs - The human face of workplace killing' is a new DVD from Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK). The resource features personal accounts from family members bereaved by work. It is intended to be a campaign and training tool on business responsibility for workplace health and safety.
FACK website • FACK resources • Face the FACKs - The human face of workplace killing, £10 including post and packing, cheques payable to 'GMHC', from: FACK, c/o Hazards Campaign, Windrush Millennium Centre, 70 Alexandra Road, Manchester M16 7WD.

Health and safety gone mad?
An Institute of Employment Rights (IER) briefing
August 2010 [pdf].