Front page

Introduction

In the hostile industrial relation s climate that currently exists, management has the upper hand and employees are under the greater than ever pressure to ‘get the job done’. The temptation to cut corners on safety is strong. The penalties for employees who raise safety concerns are deemed to be ‘unco-operative’ can be severe, as North Sea Oil workers have found to their cost over many years. By contrast the penalties for employers who flout the law on safety are generally derisory, however, there is extensive health and safety law in the UK, in particular the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and, more recently, the transposing into domestic legislation of important European directives. There is also a regulatory agency, the Health and Safety Executive, HSE, which is supposed to enforce the legislation and which is itself responsible to the overseeing body, the Health and Safety Commission, HSC. The question is how far the UK system of health and safety protection for employees at work is now threatened by the government’s deregulation programme.

Trade Union s and Health and Safety

Since the mid 1970’s the trade union movement has played a pivotal role in health and safety at the workplace through the system of trade union appointed safety committees and safety representatives. Section 2(4) of the Health and Safety at Work Act, under which safety committees were established provided for the appointment of safety representatives by ‘recognised trade unions’ (that is, by independent trade unions that the employer recognised for the purposes of collective bargaining on terms and conditions of employment). Section 2(5) of the Act required the election of safety representatives by the workforce instead of trade union appointment. This requirement was removed by the passage of the Employment Protection Act 1975. Thereafter, the Health and Safety at Work Act regulations became bound up with the legitimating of trade unions as the means of employees representation at the workplace on safety issues. The attempt to locate the role of the unions in safety representation within an orderly collective bargaining framework was part of the package of measures of the ten Labour government’s social contact of the mid-1970’s, which promoted corporate style industrial relations.

The trade union movement itself had responded to the opportunities provided by the legislation to provide training and support for safety representatives on a nationwide scale through TUC sponsored and individual trade union shop stewards’ health and safety training courses. Since the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977 came into effect, over 200,000 safety representatives have been trained by the TUC. Many thousands more have attended individual union courses. It was this experience which led John Remington of the HSE to comment in his evidence to the Piper Alpha inquiry on the valuable part played by safety representatives in the promotion of safety. For those who were appointed safety representatives, it was ‘a very great strength’ that they were appointed by the unions. As Rimington put it, “The unions train them in quite a sophisticated way. They have the means of putting a great deal of power at the elbow of safety representative where they care to do so” (Cullen, 1990).

As far as trade union training is concerned, however, the government grant which enabled TUD to carry out its extensive programme was finally phased out in 1995. This is particularly alarming at a time when modern safety management requires that workforce representatives have more extensive and sophisticated training if they are to make a worthwhile contribution in the form of independent audit of increasingly complex safety assessments. Of even greater importance, as Rimington noted, is the ‘power’ that unions can give the individual representative. An accredited safety representative has traditionally enjoyed a measure of enhances legal protection against victimisation, which European legislation has now extended to all the workforce. Trade Union backing has provided the confidence and authority for safety representatives to challenge management when necessary. By contrast, the individual safety representative (never mind the average employee), without the supportive context of a trade union constituency will be to that degree more exposed to management pressure.

Many workplaces, particularly smaller establishments in which collective bargaining arrangements are absent, lack any form of safety committee, nor do employees, in the e absence of trade union recognition have any statutory rights to safety representation. Where safety committees exist, they do soon an ad hoc voluntary basis. A possible future target for deregulation may be the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977, which provide for the appointment of trade union nominated safety representatives (the major basis for employee involvement in health and safety at the workplace for nearly 20 years). European legislation, in particular the framework directing (89.391/EEC), could provide a convenient rationale for dismantling the existing arrangements. The irony of the government being able to use European law to undermine workers rights in this area should not be lost.

One very interesting finding from the third Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (WIRS3) of some 2000 establishments suggests ‘an interesting reluctance of individual employees to put themselves forward for representative roles in the late 1980’s (Millward, Stevens, Smart and Hawes, 1992). It would appear that a degree of apprehension about performing the role of safety representatives has become a prominent feature of industry in the current period of recession and employment contraction. The individual reluctance to stand was most marked where no committee structure existed, itself perhaps an indication of employees’ inhibition as a result of their potential exposure as isolated individuals. WIRS3 also found a rise in the proportion of workplaces where managers dealt with health and safety issues without consultation, particularly in the non-union private sector. This is despite ‘consultation’ and ‘empowerment’ being managerial human resource buzz words.

WIRS3 noted some quite surprising trends, however, despite recession and a decrease in influence in other areas of industrial relations, trade unions in 1990 were, overall, as involved in health and safety representation as they had been in 1984. Establishment level health and safety committees included trade union representatives in around three quarters (77 percent) of cases, with little variation by the broad sector of employment. The proportion of workplaces where some representatives were chosen by unions actually increased 27 to 36 percent. By contrast, there was a slight drop, from 48 to 41 percent (Millward, Stevens, Smart and Hawes, 1992). In the proportion of all representatives chosen by trade unions, this continuing and positive role is a likely future target for attack (Storey and Barker, 1994). It would appear that the government may be getting ready to launch a backdoor attack on the role of workers health and safety protection in much the same way that it has done in the case of HSE as a regulatory agency.

The possible undermining of the system of health and safety representation, accompanied by declining union recognition, diminishing central government financial support for trade union training, reduced funding for the HSE itself, the emphasis in European legislation on an all inclusive individualised system of employee representation the more general climate of legislative deregulation, pose new threats to the4 continued existence and effectiveness of the union-appointed safety representatives and committees. Yet, research has shown that it is precisely in those plants with established trade union based safety committees that the best safety records are to be found. (Walters, 1993).

The outlook is not entirely bleak. Explicit individual trade union opposition to deregulation is now achieving much sharper focus on issues of health and safety. This was reflected in motions from a wide range of unions to 1994’s TUC and Scottish TUC conferences and the prioritisation of safety as a campaigning issue (TUC, 1994). A number of unions have issued considered statements or documents on the dangers posed by health and safety deregulation (GMB, 1994). There are also ongoing trade union led campaigns, such as the Construction Safety Campaign in the building industry, important union supported research and publications such as hazards and various trade unions and unemployed workers resource centres (Bergman, 1991). Both within the structure of the HSC as a tripartite body and from the grass roots of the trade union movement, there is now an opportunity to broaden the debate about the future of occupational health and safety in the UK. A united public campaign led by the trade union movement, could not only make an informed contribution to the future shape of health and safety law, but in so doing crystallise much of the wider public unease about the supposed benefits of privatisation and deregulation. Deregulation poses a challenge to the trade union movement which, while it cannot be ignored may provide new opportunities to portray trade unionism in a positive light and trade unions are essential in establishing very high standards of workplace health and safety.

Bibliography

HSC, Annual Report 1993/94I (London: HMSO 1994).
Deregulation Task Forces, Proposals for Reform (London: Task Force Support Unit 1994).
Cited in Lord Cullen, The Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Disaster) (London: MNSO 1990).
N Millward, M Stevens, D Smart and RW Hawes, Workplace Industrial Relations in Transition (1992).
Ibid., p 163.
C Storey and R Barker, The safety representative is an endangered species (Parts 1 and 2). Health and Safety at Work, July/August 1994).
D Walters, Employee representation of Health and Safety in Britain and Europe (paper presented at STUC International Confere4nce, Glasgow 1993).
TUC, Better Safety Standards at Work: Setting the Safety Agenda (London Trade Union Congress, 1994).
GMB, Freedom to Kill? The Case against Deregulation London GMB, 1994).
D Bergman, Deaths at Work: Accidents or Corporate Crime (London WEA, 1991).