26 June 2004.

Britain
TGWU negotiates working time cuts with no loss of pay
Union members at one of the UK's largest haulage companies have backed a deal negotiated by transport union TGWU to reduce working hours in line with the working time directive but with no loss of pay.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

Britain
PCS calls for union and safety rights
A PCS conference resolution says PCS must campaign for the government to take measures including: Introducing a law on corporate killing; imposing specific health and safety duties on company directors; giving safety reps the power to issue provisional improvement notices; and allowing trade unions to represent members whether or not they are recognised for collective bargaining.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

Britain
Killer chimney bosses escape with a fine
Company bosses criticised in court for a series of fatal safety blunders have escaped with fines totalling £17,000. They were originally charged with manslaughter after the fireball death of two steeplejacks, but these charges were later dropped.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

Britain
Waste industry wastes lives
HSE says fatality rates in the waste industry are over 10 times the national average in the waste industry, which is now more dangerous than construction. HSE does not mention any plan to enforce higher standards, however, but instead says it will be "good partners" with the industry, encouraging self-regulation.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

Britain
Food giant fined peanuts after teenager loses fingertips
Food multinational Geest must pay out fines and legal costs of just £10,000 after an untrained teenage migrant worker lost three fingertips while working at one of its Spalding factories.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

Britain
Bus driver shot with nail gun in racist attack
A black woman bus driver has been shot in the stomach with a nail gun by a motorcyclist who shouted that he "hated Somalians." The woman, who is not Somali, needed surgery to remove the 2.5-inch nail from her abdomen, Scotland Yard said.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

Britain
Hatfield victim's family gets £1m
The family of one of the four victims of the Hatfield rail crash has received £1 million damages at the High Court.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

Britain
Rail worker killed by train "lacked proper training"
A 21-year-old railway worker was hit and killed by a train in London because a construction company and a recruitment agency failed to train him properly, a court heard. Balfour Beatty and McGinley Recruitment Services both denied they had employed Michael Mungovan.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

USA
Being downsized increases stroke risk
People who lose their job close to retirement age are more than twice as likely to have a stroke as people of the same age who had not lost a job, new research suggests.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

Australia
Surge in claims for workplace stress
Stressed-out workers in Australia are flooding insurers with claims as a result of low job control, high job demands and poor support from their bosses. Insurers say mental stress accounts for 6 per cent of all injury claims, and the costs per case are considerably higher because victims take more time off work than for other injuries and incur higher medical and legal bills.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

Australia
Union action call on the child killing fields
An average of 30 children aged under 14 years are killed each year on Australian farms, prompting calls from unions for more action to protect children in the workplace. As well as killing a child every 13 days on average, each year a further 575 are injured in Australian workplaces and require treatment in a hospital.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

Europe
Unions put the case for laws and bargaining
The current enthusiasm for "corporate social responsibility" in Europe must not replace collective bargaining and legislation, says the ETUC, the Europe-wide union body. Earlier this month, campaigners warned the UK government's framework for CSR was not working and was "effectively ghost-written by the CBI.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

South Africa
Government acts to ban asbestos
South Africa is to ban the manufacture and new use of asbestos. Environment minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk told South African MPs the government will "be publishing regulations this year to prohibit the use of asbestos."
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

USA
Beating Bush for safety's sake
US union CWA is making health and safety an issue in the upcoming US election, and is using its "Bill of Rights" to remind members of the Bush administration's dreadful record on workplace safety, which has seen safety laws and enforcement butchered.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

USA
IBM second attempt to bury cancer evidence
First IBM made sure an analysis of its own workforce cancer records was ruled inadmissible in court, after researchers claimed they showed a clear cancer excess. Now a major academic publisher is refusing to publish the analysis and is facing an embarrassing contributors' boycott as a result.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

USA
Auto union and industry in safety drive
Union reps and industry bosses from DaimlerChrysler, Ford, GM and other major US companies have linked up at auto union UAW's national training centre to brainstorm safer ways of working.
Risks 162, 26 June 2004

19 June 2004

Britain
Unions fight off attack on criminal injuries payouts
A TUC-led campaign to defend a scheme that compensates victims of violent crime has been successful. Home Secretary David Blunkett said on 14 June he had been persuaded by approaches from TUC and others that he should not switch responsibility for payouts from the government-run Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (CICS) to employers when the crimes occur at work.
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

Britain
Workers organise over snack factory safety
Asian workers at a snack factory supplying major UK supermarkets are organising to improve safety standards. Every day there are three to four accidents in Katsouris Fresh Food's three north London sites, says GMB branch secretary Hiten Vaidya.
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

Europe
Pilots defeat plan to impose longer working hours
Airline pilots have won a remarkable victory in their campaign against a Europe-wide increase in their working hours, following a decision by ministers to block the proposals.
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

Britain
UNISON compensation victory will hurt all dangerous bosses
A massive £354,000 compensation award won by public service union UNISON means employers can no longer use ignorance of health risks as a legal defence. UNISON member Alison Dugmore, 37, after developing a life-threatening latex allergy.
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

Global
Formaldehyde definitely causes cancer in humans
Formaldehyde, a chemical to which an estimated 1 million European Union workers are exposed at work, definitely causes cancer in humans, officials say. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has upped its assessment of the chemical to "Group 1".
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

Global
Secondhand smoke causes cancer - period
Secondhand smoke causes cancer - and the evidence is so compelling the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) says it "puts a final stop to all controversies fuelled at various degrees by the tobacco industry."
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

Britain
"Overwhelming" support for workplace smoking ban
Four out of five people support the idea of a ban on smoking in the workplace, the largest poll of public attitudes on the issue has found.
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

Britain
Safer workplace? Just want the doctor ordered
Workers make fewer visits to their GPs and see improvements in workplace safety after receiving occupational health advice in their doctor's surgery, a new report has found.
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

Bangladesh
Scrapped ship's deadly gas leak wreaks havoc
Toxic gas leaking from a ship being scrapped in one of Bangladesh's notoriously hazardous shipbreaking yards has beenlinked to the death of a worker and illness affecting hundreds of people, forcing many from their homes.
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

Europe
Agreement calls for better call centre jobs
Unions and employers signed an agreement aimed at promoting "quality employment" in call centres across Europe. The guidelines include measures to tackle stress and give workers decent training.
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

Global
Canada will fight asbestos trade controls
The Canadian government has confirmed it will try to block a global agreement that aims to curtail trade in deadly chrysotile (white) asbestos. But the global union umbrella group ICFTU says all forms of asbestos must be banned, with "just transition" programmes introduced to provide work and training for displaced workers.
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

Global
ILO acts on commercial fishing perils
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is to take action to improve the safety and working conditions of some 35 million people who work in the global fishing sector.
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

USA
Workers' advocates call for work deaths action
Commenting after a spate of migrant worker deaths in New York, Susan McQuade of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) said while the official safety enforcement agency OSHA has focused on training programmes, what was really needed was stricter enforcement and larger fines and penalties. "Without strict enforcement, there's no onus on the contractor," she said.
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

USA
Safety watchdog's respirator expert had company ties
Warren Myers, hired by US official safety watchdog OSHA as an expert witness for its hearings on respiratory protection, gave what amounted to a ringing endorsement for 3M's products. The panel wasn't told that just five weeks earlier he had been a paid adviser for lawyers defending 3M against hundreds of thousands of lawsuits alleging that defects in the firm's first government-approved mask caused workers to get lung diseases.
Risks 161, 19 June 2004

12 June 2004

Europe
Alarm at "disastrous" Euro safety enforcement move
TUC, unions and campaigners across Europe have responded with alarm to a Euro plan that could stop national enforcement agencies enforcing safety laws for some foreign companies based on their turf.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Britain
TSSA calls for zero tolerance as assaults on rail staff increase
TSSA, Britain's biggest rail union, is calling on train operating companies to introduce a zero tolerance policy on customer violence after a safety report revealed that assaults on staff have risen for the third successive year.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Britain
Amicus survey shows lab workers are at risk
Lab workers are facing serious health risks, according to a survey by science union Amicus. The union "found evidence of some worrying ways in which their health is not being protected" and said: "If safety reps were automatically contacted whenever the HSE inspector calls, if they had the right to issue Union Improvement Notices and be involved in all risk assessments, these would be big steps forward."
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Global
Union warning after fatal attack on BBC news team
The killing of a BBC cameraman and the wounding of a reporter in Saudi Arabia has highlighted the increasingly frightening choices facing journalists who report from the world's most dangerous regions, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has said.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Britain
Union signs accord to beat harassment
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has struck a formal accord with the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) to help ensure dignity and respect for all workers represented by the union.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Britain
Pilots working hours campaign takes off
The British public support overwhelmingly airline pilots who say flying hours should be determined not by politicians but by experts or by pilots.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Britain
Unions provide legal support for blast tragedy families
The Maryhill victims' families and survivors of the factory blast which killed nine workers are to be given free legal advice and support by Scotland's top union body - even though they are not union members.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Britain
Deadly legacy of London's asbestos industry
A London community has been blighted for decades by asbestos disease, according to a union-backed report. Rising from the dust, produced by the London Hazards Centre with support from Barking and Dagenham UNISON, tracks the deadly passage of asbestos imported through London's docks into the Cape asbestos factory in Barking and then out into our vehicles, schools, hospitals and homes.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Britain
Bar staff union votes for smoking ban
Bar, pub, club and catering staff members of the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) have voted in favour of an outright ban on smoking in bars, pubs, clubs and restaurants.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Britain
Prime minister considers public smoking ban
Tony Blair has said the government is considering introducing a ban on smoking in public places and will come to a view in the "next few months."
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Britain
Scottish Executive seek smoking ban views
The Scottish Executive has launched a consultation on whether to introduce a smoking ban in public places.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Britain
Directors have best jobs and lowest stress
Bosses have the least work stress, most job satisfaction and the best health, according to a new study. Senior business directors came bottom of the stress table in all three areas measured by the study - physical health, psychological well-being and job satisfaction.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Britain
Father hits out at "joke" fine after deaths
A grieving dad has hit out after a firm was fined £15,000 over his son's death. The employer and the safety enforcement agency had both been strongly criticised in an earlier report.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Britain
Helen Clark, global high tech campaigner
Helen Clark, a Scottish woman who fought high tech hazards on her doorstep and won acclaim worldwide, has died. Helen was chair of Phase Two, the campaign group for those fighting hazards and ill-health caused by the microchip industry in Scotland's Silicon Glen.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004 • Hazards Phase Two webpage

Australia
Rail unions condemn "beer nannies"
Management at RailCorp in Australia has ordered supervisors to monitor the alcohol intake of workers out of hours in a move unions say shows drug and alcohol testing is off the rails.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Global
The unacceptable costs of child domestic labour
Child domestic labour is a widespread and growing global phenomenon that traps as many as ten million children or more - mostly girls - in hidden forms of exploitation, often involving abuse, health risks and violence, according to a new report from the International Labour Office (ILO).
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

Global
Survey charts the spread of anti-union repression
With 129 trade unionists killed worldwide and an upward swing in death threats, imprisonment and physical harassment, trade union rights continue to be violated across the world.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

India
White asbestos must be banned say campaigners
Health campaigners in India are demanding a ban on white asbestos, saying the thousands die each year in the country from asbestos related diseases.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

USA
Axing safety law left women at risk
President Bush's decision to axe an ergonomics safety law introduced in the last days of the Clinton presidency has left workers in the heavily female health care field particularly prone to injury.
Risks 160, 12 June 2004

5 June 2004

Britain
TUC calls for safety rep action on asbestos
The TUC is calling on union health and safety reps to check their employer is complying with new legal duties under the asbestos management regulations.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Britain
Report praises safety committee after pupil death
An OFSTED inspection has highlighted a school's "health and safety culture" as a strength of the school. Unions pressed for the creation of a safety committee after a pupil was killed in a workplace tragedy.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Britain
CATU to seek cash for sick potters
Potters' union CATU is investigating ways to win financial support for sick ceramics workers. The union has been in talks with its legal advisers about a strategy to get chronic bronchitis and emphysema recognised as government-compensated industrial diseases for pottery staff.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Britain
Battling teachers face job burnout
Secondary school teachers are spending so much of their working day dealing with worsening pupil behaviour that many fear they will be burned out long before retirement, says a report commissioned by teaching union NUT.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Britain
GPMU slams "appalling" packing jobs
A major packaging supplier to the supermarkets Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Safeway is employing non-English speaking workers in "Dickensian" conditions as strike cover, according to the union GPMU.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Britain
Compensation culture is a "damaging myth"
Britain's "compensation culture" is a myth, an official investigation has found. David Arculus, chair of the Better Regulation Task Force, said "the issue is too important to ignore - what's needed is a good dose of reality to dispel this damaging myth."
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Britain
Families remember blast victims
As recent workplace tragedies focus attention on safety enforcement in Britain's workplaces, relatives of people killed in one of Britain's worst industrial accidents are commemorating its 30th anniversary. Twenty-eight people died in the explosion at the Nypro Chemical Plant in Flixborough on 1 June 1974.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Britain
HSE abandons some death and injury probes
Deaths and injuries to members of the public, which until recently would have been investigated by the Health and Safety Executive, will no longer be subject to inquiry, the Centre for Corporate Accountability (CCA) has said. It adds that under the new system HSE will also no longer inspect hospitals, the police, local authorities and others to see whether they are complying with their public safety duties.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Britain
Corporate responsibility scheme is "not working"
The government's global framework for corporate social responsibility is not up to the job and has been "effectively ghost-written by the CBI." The criticism of the government's voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) International Strategic Framework comes in letter to ministers from CORE, a corporate responsibility coalition including charities, unions and campaign and business groups.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Britain
Labour plans public smoking ban election pledge
Labour is preparing to go into the next election with a manifesto commitment to ban smoking in public places, it has emerged.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Britain
Man banned from every UK hospital
An abusive patient has become the first person to be banned from entering or calling all NHS premises or private clinics in the UK. Norman Hutchins, 53, from York, was made the subject of an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) after a court was told he had verbally and physically abused NHS staff 47 times in the last five months.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Britain
Occ doc sicknote plan report due soon
Government research into ways to shift the responsibility for issuing sicknotes from GPs to other healthcare professionals is nearing completion. Jane Kennedy, minister of state for work, conceded that there would be a big training agenda involving line managers, employers and unions if that approach was to be adopted.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Australia
Working for a living can kill you
For more than 2,000 Australian workers every year, something goes fatally wrong on the job - sometimes catastrophically, but more often in ways that are slow, insidious and unseen. The Australian Workers Union's Yossi Berger says the toll is more like 8,000 when you consider "all those silent occupational diseases" that might take 30 years to kill someone.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Europe
Challenge to finance employers over stress
A union group is to challenge European finance employers to take joint action against growing levels of stress at work. A European - or even global - day of action is under consideration to highlight the stress levels faced by finance staff internationally, says union umbrella group UNI-Europa.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Global
Cigarette smoke is drifting out of work
One of the most serious occupational safety and health hazards of our time - smoking - is slowly but surely drifting out of the workplace, says a report from the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Report author Carin Håkansta warns, however: "It will take time before awareness levels are where they should be, and before the main actors deal with the issue in a responsible way."
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Japan
Record numbers worked into the ground
A record 438 people applied for worker's compensation for mental illness caused by overwork last year, according to new figures from Japan's health ministry. The year from April 2003 also saw a record 108 compensation payouts approved, with 40 of the awards where to the dependants of victims of work-related suicide.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

New Zealand
Meatworkers face higher risk of cancer
Meatworkers face a higher risk of cancer, new research has shown. Latest findings from New Zealand reinforce international studies linking work as a butcher or slaughterhouse worker with an increased risk of lung and larynx cancer, leukaemia and lymphoma.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

Singapore
Work deaths prompt safety review
Singapore's leaders have assured the public the government will get to the bottom of recent industrial accidents. In the latest incident, five Indian nationals and two Malaysians were killed after a fire swept through a Portugal-registered oil tanker undergoing repair at the Keppel shipyard.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

USA
Worker safety is a casualty of "special interest takeover"
A new report shows worker safety and public health measures have been undermined by a big money "special interest takeover" of US policy. Last month, a series of business-friendly workplace safety bills passed their first legislative hurdle.
Risks 159, 5 June 2004

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