Involving staff in health and safety matters is one of the most important things an employer can do. Susan Murray, who is speaking at this year’s RoSPA Congress alongside Safety & Health Expo, considers the value of trained and effective health and safety representatives as a vehicle for worker engagement.
The HSE’s new draft strategy for Great Britain, while recognising previous improvements, states: “The disturbing fact is that Great Britain’s health and safety performance has stopped improving.” So, with this official confirmation from the safety regulator that the rate of improvement in Britain’s health and safety performance has ground to a halt, there is an urgent need to make the best use of all available tools to regain the lost momentum.
What makes this apparent plateau even more worrying is that, as argued by Hilda Palmer of Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK) in a recent SHP article (The whole story, December), the official statistics provide a picture of work-related deaths, injuries and ill health that is far from complete.
Safety representatives
Engaging and involving employees in health and safety at work is a long-established requirement under health and safety legislation. The legal requirements stem, in particular, from the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977, and other regulations.
To quote the HSE’s draft strategy once again, it recognises that there is “overwhelming evidence that unionised workplaces and those with health and safety representatives are safer and healthier”.
The economic benefits of safety representatives were set out in a Department of Trade and Industry paper, Workplace representatives: A review of their facilities and facility time, published in January 2007, which concluded that safety representatives save society between £181m and £578m a year, as a result of the reduction in lost time associated with occupational injuries and work-related illnesses. It further estimated that safety reps prevent between 8000 and 13,000 workplace accidents and between 3000 and 8000 work-related illnesses every year.
It should also be stressed that the contribution made by safety representatives cannot simply be measured in economic terms, as these committed individuals not only represent union members but employees as a whole.
Trades unions provide skills, leadership and a voice, which empower their members. Unions also invest considerable resources in training and supporting safety reps to give them the confidence to identify bad practices and demand improvements. Although no guarantee of competency, training is absolutely central to ensure high standards of health and safety management. The TUC trains about 10,000 safety reps every year.
Employers’ duties
Employers have a number of duties to comply with consultation requirements. These include the need to:
In addition, the Approved Code of Practice to the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 states that good health and safety organisation includes the involvement of employees and their representatives in carrying out risk assessments, deciding on preventive and protective measures, and implementing those requirements in the workplace.
Charter for change
According to the TUC report, Safety representatives: A charter for change, consultation should not be seen as an ‘add-on’ that is just good to have. It is one of the two pillars that hold up a good health and safety system, along with risk assessment and management.
Therefore, given the enormous difference that both consultation and safety representatives can make in terms of health and safety performance, the fact that the majority of UK workplaces have no mechanism for consultation is nothing short of appalling.
Safety representatives must be able to carry out their activities on behalf of all the employees they represent — and feel able do so without feeling that they are seen as a ‘pest’, or that it will prejudice their career.
In summary, there is a wealth of evidence to show the significant and continuing contribution that trades unions make to workplace health and safety in Great Britain, and they need to be used to their full potential if the HSE is to achieve its goal of stimulating further improvements in the country’s health and safety performance.
Susan Murray is head of health and safety for the T&G section of Unite the union.
http://www.rospa.com/events/occsafetycongress/index.htm
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