News release, 23 April 2025 [No embargo]
Every year globally, on 28 April, trade unions, workers, and families hold remembrance events marking International Workers Memorial Day (IWMD) because each year work continues to kill millions. In the UK alone the Hazards Campaign calculates 50,000 deaths a year, that’s 137 daily. (1)
IWMD is our opportunity to ‘Remember the Dead and Fight for the Living.’ This year’s theme is AI and digital platforms and their impact on workers health and safety.
‘Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be used to mitigate monotonous work, AI at work is increasing work intensification, monitoring and surveillance, generating negative impacts on mental and physical wellbeing, as workers experience the extreme pressure of constant, real-time micromanagement and automated assessment.’ (ITUC)(2)
AI is already prolific in our working lives, it is used to allocate tasks and track workers but also has been used to negate workers’ rights, for example restricting appropriate breaks leading to work related stress and mental ill health. AI in many circumstances, is leading to unacceptable pressures through pervasive monitoring and target-setting technologies, serious injuries and ill health.(3)
Workers need more than strong words to ensure AI doesn’t increase the pressure on workers. Workers need robust Government policies and also health and safety enforcement authorities with the teeth to control the risks to workers.
Decades of underfunding and under resourcing with increased responsibilities means HSE is running on empty.
The HSE’s own data shows enforcement is stagnating, it is not making impact on fatal and major injuries at work and is conducting far fewer inspections. Work related ill-health is stuck at an all-time high of 1.7-1.8 million workers, an increase of almost 40 per cent since 2010. With working time losses of 34 million working days in 2023/2024, an increase from 22 million in 2010. (4)
If Stephen Timms, the Minister of State for Social Security and Disability responsible for the HSE, and the Government are serious about keeping people in work, they must also be serious about making sure that work is of a decent standard. Jobs should not harm workers or push disabled and ill people out of the workplace—or into an even worse situation.
There is both a moral and economic case for holding employers accountable for managing occupational risks faced by workers. Enforcement authorities must ensure that employers are meeting their legal duties. The Government must guarantee transparency from regulators and provide them with the resources they need to do their job properly.
The Hazards Campaign challenges the Government to invest in the health and safety of workers by resourcing the enforcement authorities and that only then, will work pay and not by workers lives.
For more information please see:
- Hazards Campaign The Whole Story – https://www.hazardscampaign.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/The-Whole-story-2024.pdf
- ITUC – https://28april.org/?p=7125
- Hazards, number 168/169 double issue, 2025 – CODE RED| AI and digitalisation – technology shouldn’t be the boss of you https://www.hazards.org/AI/codered.htm
- Hazards, number 168/169 double issue, 2025 – FLATLINING | Work hurts more, but bosses have never been less accountable – https://www.hazards.org/deadlybusiness/flatlining.htm
- https://gmhazards.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/International-Workers-Memorial-Day-general-circular-2025.pdf
For more information, press only:
Contact: Janet Newsham
Tel: 07734317158
The Hazards Campaign is a UK-wide network of resource centres and campaigners. The Hazards Campaign supports those organising and campaigning for justice and safety at work.
Contact details:
The Hazards Campaign
c/o Greater Manchester Hazards Centre
Windrush Millennium Centre
70 Alexandra Road
Manchester, M16 7WD
ENGLAND
twitter @hazardscampaign
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