Workers Memorial Day in Blackburn 2019
From May 2019
As the TUC publication “The UNION Effect” makes clear, trade union involvement in Health and Safety helps to reduce injuries at work, leads to reductions in the levels of ill-health caused by work, encourages greater reporting of injuries and near-misses, makes workers more confident about confronting poor working conditions and creates a more positive safety culture.
By his painful memory of an horrific accident within the Georgia Pacific group, however, retired UNITE Convenor George Davies reminded those attending this year’s Workers Memorial Day ceremony in Blackburn that there were no absolute guarantees. Things can go wrong even in the best organised and most conscientious workplaces. It was a reminder that we should not take things for granted or think that Heath and Safety was ever “job done”. What happened next, however, was also important. Managers and Health and Safety reps were immediately organised across a large and complex organisation to understand what had happened and, hopefully, prevent it from ever happening again.
Julie Rigby, Unison Joint Health and Safety Officer for East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust spoke about the benefit to workers when the Union was able to work with a receptive and responsible employer, but also emphasised that it was important to resist the temptation to see Health and Safety rules as being petty or too fussy. What motivated her most of all was the way that Health and Safety was a way in which people looked after each other. Those who speak up about Health and Safety issues do so because they are looking out for their work colleagues, not just for themselves.
Janet Newsham, from the Greater Manchester Hazards Centre and “Families Against Corporate Killers” (FACK), reminded us that too many workers did not have the benefits of Trade Union membership or mindful employers. Reading out a FACK statement she said: “our plea is that what we also need to get out of the workplace are dangerous, substandard management, substandard supervision, substandard risk assessments and method statements, substandard equipment, substandard inspections”.
“2019 is the TUC’s year of the young worker and for far too many FACK families, they live in the knowledge that their young worker will remain forever young, lives cut heart-wrenchingly short by workplace failures.
“Consider 17-year-old apprentice Daniel, who had been working for less than a week, when he was allowed to go up onto the roof of a store without proper supervision, and who died when he fell through a skylight.
Only earlier this month his mum Anthea wrote:
“16 years today…Dan lost his life and we too lost a huge chunk of ours. Our job. Our future. Whilst Roy Clark did a few months [for manslaughter] and returned running his company with no penalties. Ironically, we’ve passed him this morning on our way to get flowers for Dan. He was driving, whilst using his phone…nothing changes.”
Trades Council Opposes Darwen Jobcentre Closure
From February 2017
February’s Trades Council meeting discussed the proposed closure of Darwen Jobcentre.
Arising from this, we have now responded to the official Department for Work and Pensions “consultation” on the proposal.
Our Response says that:
> The DWP “Consultation Document” “fails to present evidence sufficient to bear the weight of the conclusion it reaches”;
> The population of Darwen is bigger than that of some other towns, like Skipton, that will keep their Jobcentres;
> The DWP proposal does not give sufficient weight to the rank of some areas of Darwen as being amongst the 10% “most deprived” in Britain;
> Caroline Nokes, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Delivery, gave Parliament a misleading impression of the impact of new claims being made online, because citizens making new claims were still obliged to attend a Jobcentre as part of both the new claim and claim maintenance requirements;
> Some citizens will be forced to spend up to 3.4% of their monthly benefit income on travel if claim maintenance is moved to Blackburn; and
> The DWP has failed to take enough account of the fact that unemployment is cyclical and will inevitably go up again at some points in the future.
It concludes that: “A case has not been made that Darwen citizens should be obliged to go elsewhere for mandatory interviews or to access jobsearch focussed technology”.
You can download a full copy of the Response here:
Trades Council accuses NHS England of “misdirection and sleight of hand” over “Calderstones” closure
From January 2017
Delegates at the January Trades Council meeting approved a Response to the NHS England consultation on proposals to close the Mersey Care NHS Trust Whalley site, formerly known as Calderstones.
In the “News” section of their website NHS England refers to the site as “England’s last old long-stay learning disability hospital”. The Trades Council response points out that Calderstones “closed as an in-patient residential hospital for people with learning disabilities in 1999”. What is now on site is a specialist NHS Unit, much of which has been purpose built in the 21st century. The Response accuses NHS England of “misdirection and sleight of hand” in how it describes the current situation.
The very title of the NHS England Consultation Document is misleading. “What is particularly at stake here” the Response says, “ is less a “Proposed redesign of learning disability and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) services in the North West” than a question of what medium and low secure facilities should be provided for people with learning disabilities as an alternative to the criminal justice system”.
The Trades Council Response notes that “95% of the 202 people using “Calderstones Partnership NHS Trust” inpatient services at the end of January 2015 were individuals detained under the Mental Health Act”. It says that the context in which the NHS England proposals should be judged is that of the “question of what medium and low secure facilities should be provided for people with learning disabilities as an alternative to the criminal justice system” – and it refers to research that shows “There has….been a recurrent concern that people with learning disabilities were being inappropriately kept in prisons, to their detriment and the detriment of the prisons themselves”.
In their Summer 2016 “Bromley Briefing”, for example, the Prison Reform Trust reported that “Prisoners with learning disabilities or difficulties are more likely than other prisoners to have broken a prison rule; they are five times as likely to have been subject to control and restraint, and around three times as likely to report having spent time in segregation” (Source: Talbot, J. (2008) “Prisoners’ Voices: Experiences of the criminal justice system by prisoners with learning disabilities and difficulties” – London: Prison Reform Trust).
NHS England fails to convince that it has properly addressed the central issues of how people with a learning disability are treated when they encounter the criminal justice system. What NHS England presents as potentially appropriate alternatives are in reality vague plans rather than specific developments.
The Trades Council wants the proposed closure of the Mersey Care NHS Trust Whalley site to be taken off the agenda entirely. It argues that in its Response that:
“We need to see an assessment of the need for low and medium secure facilities for people with learning disabilities that is part of a multi-agency review looking at all stages of the process of potential interaction with the criminal justice system and the Mental Health Act. Such a review should encompass clarification of the circumstances under which care and treatment from health and social care services should take the place of criminal justice system action, how an effective assessment system for people with learning disabilities could be established, what sort of support can be provided for people for whom prison remains the preferred option and how easy it is for people to access and to move between low and medium secure care as and when required. In the absence of such a review, and of any empirical content of equivalent status, the Consultation Document clearly fails to sustain the weight of the policy decisions it seeks to promote”.
The Trades Council is unhappy about the practice adopted by the Consultation, of only inviting responses to a “survey”, as being an unacceptable attempt to shape the outcome of the exercise. The Consultation Document fails to address issues and circumstances fundamental to assessing the course of action proposed and consequently the attempt to restrict participants in the Consultation to questions that ignore these issues looks deeply flawed.
Delegates also felt that there should be an investigation into the management of Calderstones Partnership NHS Foundation Trust in recent years, particularly in respect of 1) how it could justify using public money to set up “Future Directions” as a care provider that took over contracts previously held by the NHS and then drove down staff terms and conditions; and 2) how it conducted itself in respect of the “takeover” by Mersey Care Foundation NHS Trust.
A .pdf copy of the Trades Council Response can be downloaded here: