St Helen’s Workers Memorial is based on a glass worker playing with their child in the open air. Attendees pin purple forget-me- knot ribbons to the coat each year. Very beautiful and moving.
All set for tomorrow Remember the dead fight for the living pic.twitter.com/vzGQcpwPKb
— The Workers Memorial (@MemorialWorkers) April 27, 2024
TUC has published an interactive map listing 28 April events. It is being continually updated – you can submit an event yourself or view the map here. .png)
More on TUC’s 28 April webpages
Families Against Corporate Killers has released the following statement to mark International Workers’ Memorial Day:
“A simple sentence written by Anthea on her husband Peter’s first missed birthday. But words which wrap within them a whole world of pain. Because, Peter had died in an incident at his workplace a matter of weeks before. Some 21 years before this, Anthea and Peter had seen their 17 year-old son Dan leave for work, and not return home. He had been sent on to a fragile roof, without supervision, less than a week into his working life. A decision by his employer which ended his all too short life. One woman should never ever have to bear such loss. When our time with our loved ones is cut so brutally short, FACK family members can remain
held captive in a moment in time… ”
“…The time is now for those employers who have not yet done so, to wake up to their responsibilities; for politicians to bolster protections; for the climate crisis to be tackled; for regulators to be given the resources to proactively and preventatively inspect; and for future generations of loved ones to be given more time, all of their time.”
Read the full FACK statement here
Wednesday 24 April 2024
Hundreds of union reps will inspect workplace buildings for safety this week
The TUC has organised a nationwide inspection of workplace buildings this week, with more than 600 trade union health and safety reps taking part.
Building safety has come to the fore in recent years for several reasons, including:
The TUC is calling on the government and employers to make workplace buildings safer by:
The week of action on building safety is part of TUC and trade union activity for Workers’ Memorial Day on Sunday 28 April, when we remember those who lost their lives due to work-related illness or injury and commit to making all workplaces safe.
TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said:
“Everyone should be safe at work. But when some people step through the door of their workplace, they step into danger.
“This week trade unions are taking action by inspecting the safety of hundreds of workplace buildings. And we are calling on government ministers to speed up the removal of RAAC and asbestos from schools, hospitals and other public buildings.
“If you’re worried about safety at work, get together with colleagues to join a union. Unions give workers the power to protect themselves. And the health and safety reps that we train can be life-savers.”
Notes
– Extent of RAAC and asbestos in workplace buildings: The full extent of buildings containing RAAC is not yet known. However, it has already been identified in thousands of public buildings, including hundreds of schools and hospitals.
Surveys have so far found RAAC in 234 education settings, and the government says that in 119 schools one or more buildings will have to be rebuilt or refurbished. More information is here. A list of the schools where RAAC has been identified is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reinforced-autoclaved-aerated-concrete-raac-management-information
An estimated 1.5 million buildings in Britain contain asbestos. Research by the TUC and Labour Research Department has uncovered the extent of asbestos in parts of the public estate, including NHS premises in London and Scotland and English local authority buildings.
– Work and Pensions Committee recommendation on asbestos: The Committee’s report ‘The Health and Safety Executive’s approach to asbestos management’ (Sixth Report of Session 2021–22) states: “We recommend that a deadline now be set for the removal of asbestos from nondomestic buildings, within 40 years. The Government and HSE should develop and publish a strategic plan to achieve this, focusing on removing the highest risk asbestos first, and the early removal from the highest risk settings including schools.” (para 52)
– About the TUC: The Trades Union Congress (TUC) exists to make the working world a better place for everyone. We bring together the 5.5 million working people who make up our 48 member unions. We support unions to grow and thrive, and we stand up for everyone who works for a living.
TUC says “We know the risks of Raac, asbestos, poor fire safety and ventilation can be a dangerous mix. Too many of our workplaces are riddled with one or more of these. Successive governments have failed to remove and improve, and too many employers fail to properly control risk.”
So in the week leading up to Workers’ Memorial Day, TUC is taking action asking union safety reps, or reps who are responsible for health and safety as part of their role to carry out a building safety inspection. Between Monday 22 and Sunday 29 April, union safety reps across the country will all inspect together. More than 600 reps have already signed up. More details
Unison – Workers’ Memorial Day video
On International Workers’ Memorial day, FBU National Officer Riccardo La Torre reflects on how health and safety has been won by struggle and solidarity, not gifted by bosses.
If you visit the Fire Brigades Union head office and climb the stairs to the top floor, you will find yourself pausing in front of a wall covered with a long list of names. For those of us who work in the building, this list is a daily reminder of why we’re there and why the union exists. Each of these two thousand plus names belongs to a firefighter killed in service. It is in their memory that we continue to organise and fight for our lives.
If we had a national record of every firefighter death from cancer or other workplace diseases, there would be thousands more names to add. In 2022, the World Health Organisation confirmed what many of us in the FBU already knew from tragic experience: firefighting is a cancer-causing occupation.
Every year on April 28th, we come together for International Workers Memorial Day, to remember each of these, and all workers’, lives lost. If you work in the fire service, you will know that our memorials are not reflections on a distant past. The fight for safety and our future is sadly still very much an ongoing struggle which shapes our lives now.
For many, ‘health and safety’ conjures up images of top-down clipboard tapping, high vis vests and managerial risk assessments. In truth, workers have had to fight ferociously to protect our health at work, and for our safety from injury and harm. Nothing has been handed to us, nothing has been gifted by bosses. The history of health and safety is of organised, radical class action. In the memory of every worker who hasn’t returned home from a shift, what we demand for ourselves and our colleagues must stay rooted in this tradition.
Take breathing apparatus (BA): arguably one of the most iconic symbols of firefighter safety. The cylinder, set and mask are what allow firefighters to breathe safely during firefighting and rescue operations. But the BA sets we now wear on our backs were hard won. Following the deaths of two firefighters at the 1958 Smithfield fire, the FBU launched demands for modernised BA that would protect lives. As a line from the union magazine at the time read, “this is the age which has launched the Sputnik. But in the fire service our breathing apparatus set has remained substantially unchanged for over 40 years.”
We won that campaign and have continued to fight to keep improving our BA ever since. During my time as the union’s Health and Safety lead, I’ve seen bosses try to take BA away from firefighters attending high-rise building fires. I’ve seen them attempt to stop PCR-covid testing for firefighters at the peak of the pandemic, and to deny the link between firefighting and cancers.
These constant attacks are why FBU health and safety reps work tirelessly across fire services every single day. On the ground, our reps know that we cannot allow the rights we have won to be rolled back or blocked.
In 2016, the Trades Union Congress published The Union Effect, a report finding that the health of a workplace is directly impacted by whether workers are part of a union: ‘organised workplaces are safer workplaces’. In a profession as dangerous and volatile as fire and rescue, we cannot afford to let our organisation slip.
To make sure we return home safely at the end of each shift, we must demand safety committees, our right to time off for training and facilities. We must use the Brown Book, speaking up for our rights every time they are threatened.
Right now, the need for a strong and fighting membership is as urgent as ever as we demand action on firefighter cancer.
Together we’ve already forced this issue on to the agenda. When the government and employers said there wasn’t enough evidence to act, we set up a lottery to fund and commission the research.
Where fire services fail to provide information on how firefighters can protect themselves from toxic fire effluents, we run our own decontamination training.
While there is currently no health monitoring for firefighters to help detect cancers early, we have now launched the first cancer testing research project for firefighters in the UK.
All progress has been down to firefighters organising and making it happen against the odds. But we’re miles behind other countries when it comes to legislation, protection and support for firefighters facing cancer. The US, Canada, Australia, and Poland, amongst others, all have laws in place that recognise these diseases as occupational – caused by going to work.
The UK government and employers are still failing to take any serious action. It’s our job as organised workers to demand, campaign for and win these protections. We’ve done it throughout our history, and we will do it again.
This Workers Memorial Day, we remember every firefighter who has fallen in the line of duty, and every firefighter killed by a disease or cancer caused by their work.
A failing HSE cut to the bone or NFCC bosses’ committees cannot be relied upon to protect and defend the health, safety and welfare of firefighters, in fact we often see the opposite. As our history demonstrates, it is often down to us, and only us, to organise and do for ourselves and each other.
No one, no one, should get ill or killed for going to work. Today and every day, we remember the dead and fight for the living.
https://www.fbu.org.uk/blog/health-and-safety-won-through-struggle
The construction sector has made significant strides in workplace safety in recent years, with the HSE reporting in 2022 a 16.7 per cent drop in on-site fatalities compared to the five-year average.
But there’s a hidden epidemic in construction – one that’s controversially not reported in HSE statistics. Even as fewer people die in workplace accidents in construction, the suicide rate has relentlessly continued climbing.
Since 2015, Glasgow Caledonian University and the Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity have compiled figures on suicides in construction. Their latest analysis found the suicide rate for construction occupations in 2021 rose to 33.82 per 100,000 from 25.52 per 100,000 in 2015 – the highest rate in any sector.
These latest figures were published just two weeks before International Workers’ Memorial Day today (April 28) and serve as a stark reminder that workplace health and safety is so much more than simply preventing accidents in the workplace.
Suicide in the construction sector is both a protracted and complex problem – there’s no one reason that more people take their lives in construction than in any other sector, explains Unite national officer Jason Poulter.
“For starters, it’s a very long-hours culture, and construction workers are often expected to be away from home – and so away from their families and usual support networks – for long periods of time,” Jason noted.
Construction is still a predominantly male working environment, and with this environment comes many of the coping mechanisms that some men turn to in times of stress, such as gambling, alcohol and substance addiction, which often end up exacerbating already poor mental health.
“There is definitely a drinking culture in construction,” Jason told UniteLive. “There’s having a drink, then there’s having a drink — going down the pub with your mates can be a positive thing, but it can just as easily spiral into addiction for some if they’re already under a lot of stress.”
Hinkley Point nuclear power station in Somerset – the UK’s largest construction project since the Second World War, employing more than 4,000 people – was an exemplar of mental ill health plaguing the construction sector in the first few years that the project began.
Back in 2019, Unite told the Guardian that in the first four months of that year alone, the union had been informed of at least 10 suicide attempts by workers employed on the site. Since then, Unite and EDF, the major employer at Hinkley Point, have worked together to redouble their efforts to support workers’ mental health.
Unite convenor at Hinkley Point Malcolm Davies in particular hailed EDF’s mental health buddies system, which is a network of volunteers who are trained as mental health first aiders to provide support and guidance to their colleagues.
“We now have over 400 trained mental health first aiders on site, the most we’ve ever had – with more and more people coming forward to take part,” he explained.
Malcolm believes that what has made the programme so successful is that it has slowly but surely changed the culture at the construction site by removing the stigma associated with talking about mental health.
“People find comfort in talking about their mental health, especially when they can talk to their peers,” Malcolm said. “Our mental health first aiders are often the first port of call and can signpost people to the different types of support they can get. We also have an on-site chaplains, as well as an on-site surgery with nurses and doctors if people need professional, medical help.”
Unite rep Matthew, 27, trained as a mental health first aider at Hinkley Point just a few months ago, and said it’s been a very rewarding experience so far.
“I myself have suffered from anxiety and depression, and I also have family who have been through some tough times, so when I started to feel better, I really wanted to help others who’ve had the same experience as me and pass on what I’ve learned,” he explained.
Matthew noted while the mental health buddies system has been in place for many years, he said a vital difference now is that they’re a lot more visible.
“There’s hundreds more of us, and initially mental health first aiders were more office-based, but now we’re on the ground, dotted around throughout the site. We’ve got ‘time to talk’ rooms where we can sit and talk to people privately. Sometimes people just need someone to listen, other times we can offer guidance like suggesting time off from work, or signposting them to seek professional help.”
Unite rep Anthony, 56, will soon train to become a mental health first aider. Like Matthew, Anthony said he’s keen to help others “because mental health is something that’s close to my heart”.
“I’ve got a little lad who’s severely autistic, and when he was first diagnosed, I went through a really rough period of depression for about a year,” he explained. “I’d like to pass on my experience to others, and sit and talk to people, because that’s what I myself needed to get through the tough times.”
Anthony said he already informally mentors many of the younger workers on site and he can’t wait to be fully trained up as a mental health first aider.
“I’m 56 and when I was a young lad, you just kept things to yourself because otherwise you’d be classed as a softy if you talked about mental health and tried to get help,” he noted. “I think it’s absolutely great now that the lads are so much more open and will come and talk. We’ve got a signs all over the site here that say, ‘It’s okay not to be okay’ and I think that’s fantastic.”
Matthew believes that working conditions in construction definitely contribute to the mental health crisis many in the industry face.
“There’s a lot of long hours, weekend work, and working away from home that I think plays a big role,” Matthew explained. “You end up missing time with your kids, with your partner and parents and all sorts in your social life. You might be home one weekend, but the weekend before maybe there was a party and you just feel like you keep missing out on life.”
While Malcolm said he’s very proud of the mental health work both the employer and Unite have done at Hinkley Point – the union also offers separate mental health training for members – he worries that not all in the sector have access to that level of support.
“On large construction projects, especially in nuclear and petrochemical, there’s a lot more money for mental health projects, and for health and safety in general,” he said.
“I think it’s up to unions like Unite to make sure we’ve got reps on the smaller projects, and make sure we get those reps trained up on mental health. We’ve lost on average 100 people each year to suicide in construction – even one is too many, and it can’t continue.”
Jason Poulter likewise said Unite and other unions have a much bigger role to play to tackle the mental health crisis facing workers in the construction sector.
But he emphasised that it is absolutely vital that employers look at the root cause of this crisis and not simply treat the symptoms – symptoms that in many ways the employers themselves are responsible for.
“There’s needs to be root and branch reform of the employment models used in construction,” he said. “Requisite rest periods – they’re not happening. They’re not paying holidays. They’re not encouraging people to take time off. There’s no work-related mental health risk assessments that we absolutely need.
“There’s also the issue of bogus self-employment where workers are burdened with tax returns and having to pay for accountants, without any of the benefits of working for yourself,” he added. “Because the reality is you aren’t working for yourself – you’re under the instruction of someone else and they can fire you on the spot. They’ve blacklisted workers; they have a culture of fire and rehire – it’s the most precarious industry in the entire economy.”
Jason said that it is not until all these factors are addressed that meaningful change will happen.
“This is what Unite is fighting for day in and day out,” he said. “For every suicide in construction, how many broken families are left behind? This is a much wider problem than many people realise, and we’ve got to do something about it. Too many people’s lives depend on it.”
You can find out more about International Workers’ Memorial Day and a find Unite event near you on our website here.
A day to remember all workers who lost their lives to workplace illness or injury, and to continue to fight for every workers’ right to a safe workplace.
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For #IWMD23 retail and distribution trade union Usdaw is promoting the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) theme of ‘Organising health and safety within the workplace’. Making the case for strong laws, strong enforcement and strong unions to help Health and Safety Reps organise, inspect and protect.
Paddy Lillis – Usdaw General Secretary says: “International Workers’ Memorial Day is when the labour movement remembers those who have been killed or injured at work and those who have died from occupational diseases. So on 28 April we ‘remember the dead and fight for the living’ by highlighting our all year round campaigning for better health and safety.
“Health and safety at work is a right not a privilege. Keeping members safe is one of the key aims of Usdaw. This involves ensuring safe working practices and environments, safety training, ensuring the supply of personal protective equipment, and advising members and reps on all other aspects of safety at work.
“Usdaw has thousands of trained Safety Reps across the UK who are instrumental in maintaining a safe workplace and who work with management to prevent accidents. Usdaw also has experts in its health and safety section at head office who, along with the Union’s network of area organisers, offer important advice and support to reps and members.
“The Health and Safety Executive brings unions and employers together, but funding cuts and Government policies have weakened its effectiveness. That is why Usdaw is calling for a reversal of the HSE cuts. We also want to see more HSE and local authority inspectors to enforce health and safety law and for the inspectors to work with Union Safety Reps when they do workplace inspections.
“Usdaw Reps across the country will be bringing Workers Memorial Day into their workplaces, publicising the importance of health and safety and in some areas participating in public ceremonies and events. I wish them well in their commemorations and campaigning.”
Notes for editors:
Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is the UK’s fifth biggest trade union with over 350,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also has many members in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades www.usdaw.org.uk
For Usdaw press releases visit: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Twitter @UsdawUnion