Working world - Hazards magazine

WORKING WORLD

Photographic features of the world of work from Hazards magazine.

The asbestos pushers
The decision was clear. The Indonesia Supreme Court gave its backing to campaigners who had argued deadly asbestos cement products must come with a warning label. But instead of accepting the decision, the asbestos industry decided on a different tack – suing the groups who brought the case for £400,000 a month for lost income. Hazards 167, 2024 • more

All eyes and ears
Union safety reps don’t need to be superheroes nor to be experts in the law. Nor do they need awards, special qualifications, or years of experience. Something that is important, though, is an innate sense of common decency.
Hazards 164, 2023 • more

Out of the shadows
Cleaners are the unsung heroes who take care of the core infrastructure that makes our societies run, says Eddy Stam of the global union UNI. He says unions are taking action to address the alarming impact of harassment, gruelling sleep schedules and exhaustion.
Hazards 162, 2023 • more

Live wires
A blacklisted construction worker’s eight-year battle for justice has ended in victory, with a damning statement delivered to the Royal Courts of Justice. Electrician Daniel Collins received a substantial settlement, but his real win was exposing along the way how far some major firms will go to suppress union activity over safety.
Hazards 161, 2023 • more

A total disgrace
The UK’s reputation as an increasing unhealthy and insecure place to work has hit a new low, with a British business leader voted the ‘World’s Worst Boss’.
Hazards 160, 2022 • more

Safety drive
A landmark Korean safety system that sets minimum pay rates for lorry drivers was under threat. In response, members of the truck drivers’ union started ‘unlimited’ national strike action in defence of a ‘Safe Rates’ system that has been demonstrated to make truck driving much safer. A week later, the union won a commitment from the government to ‘propel forward’ safe rates and discuss its expansion
Hazards 158, 2022 • more

Poisoned breath
A decade-long campaign led by the daughter of a deceased Canadian uranium miner has led to a major victory for workers struck by Parkinson’s disease after being subjected to aluminium dust inhalation “treatments” in their jobs. Janice Martell tells Hazards how she did it.
Hazards 157, 2022 • more

Dressed to kill
It may be the most happening fashion chain around. But workers for some suppliers of the Chinese fashion giant Shein are doing excessive overtime in sometimes potentially deadly workshops, an investigation by an advocacy group has found.
Hazards 156, 2021 • more

No accident
Most work-related harm is caused by diseases not accidents, say union expert Dave Smith. He says union health and safety reps need to reflect the ‘health’ in their job title.
Hazards 155, 2021 • more

Selling lies
Amazon’s attempt to sell itself as a caring employer has taken some real creativity. But installing ‘wellness chambers’ for stressed-out staff who don’t even have time to pee turned out to be a major PR blunder.
Hazards 154, 2021 • more

It's fundamental
Why must safety be fundamental? Because our jobs are killing us The Covid-19 pandemic didn’t cause a workplace occupational health crisis; it exposed it. Millions are suffering and dying each year as a price for doing their job. Covid-19 added to this toll.
Hazards 153, 2021 • more

Safety at sea
New research has identified “systemic failures” in the implementation of the regulatory regime protecting seafarers’ hours of work and rest, undermining the credibility of international regulations relating to working hours. It’s a crisis now exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, which has seen hundreds of thousands trapped at sea.
Hazards 152, 2020 • more

Bright sparks
Health and safety wasn’t handed to us on a plate by benevolent employers or far-sighted politicians, says Hazards organising expert Dave Smith. For centuries, workers fought for safer workplaces. ‘Builder’s crack’, a newly rediscovered film, reveals how sharing our organising successes and strategies is safety critical. Hazards 151, 2020 • more

Gold price
Venezuelans working in the country’s highly profitable but illegal gold mines are suffering amputations and other horrific abuses at the hands of armed groups, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has warned.
Hazards 149, 2020 • more

Discount chains
Workers on the farms and plantations that supply tea or fruit to global supermarkets including Lidl, Aldi, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons are facing poverty and harsh working conditions, according to new research from Oxfam.
Hazards 148, 2019 • more

Pilot study
Being a safety rep isn’t just about helping to prevent accidents, it’s also about trying to make a difference in relation to workers’ occupational health.
Hazards 147, 2019 • more

Stone dead
Hundreds of stonemasons took to the streets of Pindwara on 1 May 2019, to protest at the deadly dust risks facing the workers building India’s temples.
Hazards 146, 2019 • more

Irregular outcome
A few days before his death, Kim Yong-kyun joined a “selfie campaign,” posting on social media a photo of himself holding a sign reading: “Mr President, please meet with temporary workers to repeal unfair labour laws, to punish illegal outsourcers, and to replace temporary jobs with regular ones.”
Hazards 145, 2019 • more

Work is war
An alliance of unions, experts and campaigners in Turkey is determined to make visible the preventable carnage in the country’s workplaces. more

#McBurned?
On the heels of a successful organising campaign at fast food giant McDonald’s, the union BFAWU is now targeting safety problems at the burger chain. more

Samsung blues
Global electronic giant Samsung has been targeted by safety and labour standards campaigners over its deadly record of abuse. An international day of action against the company on 1 May 2018 saw its bad practices exposed once more in Asia, Europe and the United States. more

Why we do it
Why do union members across the globe mobilise on 28 April, demonstrating, inspecting, training and using all manner of creative means to put workplace health and safety in the spotlight? Because deaths caused by work are increasing and on Workers’ Memorial Day unions send out a message they won’t stand by and let it continue. more

Show us your best face!
Union safety reps have been a lifesaving presence for a working generation. They have saved the economy billions, prevented diseases and made sure accidents were not waiting to happen. Hazards is asking union reps and safety campaigners just what makes safety reps so good. And we want to hear from you too! more

A picture of health?
You probably get sick of the sight of your own workplace. But do you ever get to see where others spend their working day? The winners of the ‘Focus on safety at work’ give a glimpse of the world of work through others’ eyes. more

Surviving asbestos
Global unions have said a global UN treaty’s credibility is in tatters, after the asbestos lobby vetoed a health warning on its deadly product. more

Toxic company
The reputation of Samsung, battered by a catastrophic product recall and a bribery scandal that brought down both the company’s heir apparent and Korea’s president, is in tatters. more

Charred labour
No-one knows how many died in the Gadani shipbreaking yard inferno. But the ship, with fuel still in its tanks, was a tragedy in waiting as hundreds of informal labourers were told to start dismantling it with gas torches. more

Needle
Garment workers toiling behind the electrified fences of Sri Lanka’s free trade zones are paying a high price for making the cheap clothes sold on the UK high street, War on Want has found. more

Feel better?
A union campaign has exposed the dangerous flaws in the ‘better regulation’ strategy in operation across the European Union. more

Toxic teens
Tobacco companies are failing to protect teenage children from hazardous work in the tobacco fields, Human Rights Watch has found. more

Keeping safe
Low-paid hotel housekeepers do some of the heaviest, fast-paced and unhealthy work around. Massimo Frattini of the global union IUF describes its campaign to make hotel giants clean up their act. more

You know best
Your best defence at work is to be organised and active, says Mick Holder. In a special organising poster, he spells out the key steps to being a more effective union safety rep. more

Sew wrong
Garment workers in Cambodia are being worked into the ground. But pressure is growing for better wages and safer, healthier work. more

No deal
Free trade deals have form. While companies relish the prospect of fewer and weaker rules, workplace, public health and environmental advocates know from experience this equates to the removal at the stroke of a pen of potentially lifesaving legal protections hard won over decades. more

Low blow
Badly paid work guarantees more than hardship. Because low pay goes hand in with low safety standards, occupational injuries and diseases like diabetes and cancer frequently come with the job. more

At arm's length
Ebola control efforts and health workers at risk more

Seen this?
There’s no hiding from International Workers’ Memorial Day. more

Foul play
If the 2022 Qatar World Cup organisers thought they could head off criticism of deadly labour abuses by publishing a long promised Workers’ Safety Standards charter in February 2014 they were wrong. more

Gold standard
Children as young as eight years old are working in Tanzanian small-scale gold mines, with grave risks to their health and even their lives, an investigation has discovered. more

Jean damage
Governments and companies must take urgent action to stamp out the continued use of sandblasting and other unsafe finishing processes in the manufacture of denim jeans, a campaign coalition has demanded. more

Bangladesh
As rescue efforts drew to a close after a building collapse on 24 April 2013 that killed at least 1,127 Bangladeshi garment workers, over 30 of the world’s top retailers signed up to a groundbreaking safety deal brokered by global trade unions. more

Blacklist
Thousands of workers on a construction blacklist lost their livelihoods as a result. A Hazards photofile features the stunning Blacklist Support Group campaign that exposed collusion between employers and the police and inaction by the government. more

First blood
Diseased gold miner’s strike first blow against Anglo American. more

Moral fibre
It took a generation, but Italy’s asbestos victims finally win justice. more

Banana link
Unions here can help banana workers everywhere secure safe work. more

Deadly catch
Two global union bodies have joined forces to fight for safety in the treacherous fishing industry. more

Child's play
Over 115 million of the world's children and young teenagers, or more than 7 per cent of the total, are engaged in dangerous and life-threatening jobs, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has said. more

Fashion victims
Would you want to see someone choke and die, just so your jeans could have a fashionably battered look? Hazards discovers the sandblasting process used by garment firms is ripping to shreds the lungs of the workers churning out billions of pairs each year. more

To Europe and beyond
The European Work Hazards Network brings together unions, safety campaigners and academics to exchange information and campaign strategies on workplace health and safety. It knows hazards know no borders – and it is now seeking new links with like-minded campaigners worldwide. more

Our day
It is the world’s largest health and safety event, involving thousands of trade unions representing millions of members across 100 countries. more

Samsung's shame
Campaigners have so far collated evidence suggesting 23 Samsung workers in Korea have suffered from haematopoietic cancers like leukaemia or lymphoma, and at least nine workers have died. more

Target Asia
Canada increased its asbestos exports last year. But a new organisation, the Asian Ban Asbestos Network (A-BAN), is not letting the deadly trade go unopposed. more

Child labour
Child labour isn’t about helping out mum and dad. For millions of children worldwide, it’s a way of life. more

FACK at work
Familes Against Corporate Killers (FACK) members speak about their high profile campaign for justice. more

Asbestos threats
The asbestos industry may be ailing, but it’s not dead yet. more

Thai troubles
When 54 migrant workers suffocated in April, the world’s media focused momentarily on Thailand’s appalling safety record. But a new group says deadly exploitation is routine and largely ignored. more

Working in Japan
Many of today’s fast and furious work methods originated in Japan. Mick Holder looks at how JOSHRC, a small, union-backed advocacy organisation, has ensured safe and healthy work has survived on the agenda. more

Palestine
Israeli occupation and an economic crisis in Palestine mean the jobs that do exist tend to be poorly paid, unsafe and insecure.
more

Lumbered
The Chilean Confederation of Forestry Workers (CFT) is one of the most active unions on health and safety in the sector anywhere in the world. more

Making links
AAWL’s Manrico Moro describes the Melbourne-based organisation’s groundbreaking regional health and safety project. more

Human Wreckage
Shipbreaking workers from India travelled to London to expose the deadly risks commonplace in the industry and to demand urgent reforms to save lives.
more

Supply chains
Why should a worker in Bangladesh have to put her or his life on the line simply to make a cheap sweater or t-shirt for European shoppers? Nina Ascoly of the Clean Clothes Campaign describes the global campaign for safe work and justice. more

Life and death in Gujarat
Gujarat is one of the most industrialised regions of India providing millions of extremely hard, harsh and hazardous jobs. PTRC explains how it works to improve working conditions. more

China
Rapid industrialisation has seen China emerge as an economic superpower. It has also brought hundreds of thousands of cases of occupational disease each year and tens of thousands of workplace fatalities. more

Hazards Campaign
How can thousands of workers in one of the world’s richest nations die each year because they face obvious and preventable hazards at work? Workers have to organise for the sake of their health. more

VTHC
Unions in the state of Victoria, Australia, have been breaking new ground on workplace health and safety for over 150 years. more

NUMSA
Hlokoza Motau, international officer with metalworkers’ union NUMSA, explains how the union fights hazards and apartheid’s deadly legacy. more

Enough said
CUPE national health and safety director Anthony Pizzino tells Hazards why his union said "enough!" and moved to a more militant approach to union health and safety, with organisation at its core. more

Don't mess with the unions
A global union campaign has seen James Hardie's rapid descent from darling of the stockmarket to company in crisis, facing protests and legal action on three continents. more

Image: Union Mettle -IMF

Union mettle
Anita Gardner of the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF) describes the global union's campaign to protect shipbreaking workers. more

NZCTU image

Vital signs
New Zealand's Labour government, after intensive lobbying from unions, has introduced new laws requiring worker participation in health and safety. more

Bargaining on safety
Cathy Walker, health and safety director of autoworkers' union CAW, describes the Canadian unions' lifesaving fight for better rights and better workplaces. more

ICRT image

Secrets of the cleanrooms
From Silicon Glen in Scotland to Silicon Plateau in India, there are serious concerns about the long term health and environmental impact of the micro-electronics industry. more

Hazards magazine 84 photofile image

Growing pains
With agriculture one of the most dangerous industries, improving health and safety is a top union priority. more

Have a safe journey
ITF says co-ordinated union action on a workplace, national and global scale is the ticket to safer transport. more

Material damage
Global union ITGLWF tackles textiles hazards. more

Union building
In construction at least 108,000 workers are killed on site every year, says global union IFBWW. more

Two million killed each year
"If terrorism took such a toll, just imagine what would be said and done." Jukka Takala, ILO. more

Made in China
Global movement towards local solutions. more

Safety in numbers
Global mega-union ICEM is making things safer at work more

Building solidarity
Asia photofile: Union backed OHSE institute tackles deaths disgrace. more

Little luxuries
Union tour sees the bitter fruits of international exploitation. more