Worse than murder at work
An extract from this week's Risks Bulletin
At least twice as many people die from fatal injuries at work than are victims of homicide, a new report has revealed. Academics Professor Steve Tombs and Dr Dave Whyte found that at least 1,300 people died as a result of fatal occupational injuries in 2005-06 in England and Wales, compared with 765 homicide deaths. Non-fatal workplace injuries requiring hospitalisation were also likely to be greater that year than those needing such treatment following the violent offences formally recorded as crimes. The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies report 'A crisis of enforcement', argues that the recent trend towards 'light touch' regulation of business has in effect 'decriminalised' death and injury at work. Serious incidents are significantly under-reported, the research found. Professor Steve Tombs said: 'Violent street crime consumes enormous political, media and academic energy. But, as hundreds of thousands of workers and their families know, it is the violence associated with working for a living that is most likely to kill and hospitalise.' Co-author Dr David Whyte was critical of the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) enforcement record. He said: 'HSE enforcement notices fell by 40 per cent and prosecutions fell by 49 per cent between 2001/02 and 2005/06. The collapse in HSE enforcement and prosecution sends a clear message that the government is prepared to let employers kill and maim with impunity.' The report was welcomed by unions. Alan Ritchie, general secretary of construction union UCATT, said: 'This report must serve as a grim wake up call for the HSE. Their obsession with the policies of self-regulation mean that many workers are needlessly killed at work every year. If they do not have sufficient resources to protect workers they should say so rather than spout the mantra that business must regulate itself.' A TUC spokesperson said although HSE had recently taken steps to improve levels of inspection and enforcement, this was hampered by a lack of resources.
Labels: news
Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival
All members and families welcome.
Coach leaves the follwing pick up points: Outside the Taunton TGWU office @ 09:30 and outside the Labour Club, Yeovil @ 10:15 (Not 11am as stated in the latest newsletter)
To book your place contact the TGWU office 01823 442464 first come first served.
For more information http://www.tuc.org.uk/tolpuddle/
Labels: meetings
Minutes for May 2008 meeting
Union members in Yeovil tax office to fight closure
The union warned that the ability of the department to collect revenue and provide advice to the public and local businesses would be undermined by the crude drive to slash jobs and cut costs. PCS said that services were already being undermined because of the drive to axe 25,000 jobs and close more than 200 offices, which has led to a backlog of post and poor staff morale. Job cuts are already damaging the ability of the department to function and undermining public confidence, with an estimated £42 billion in tax going uncollected and corporate tax avoidance totalling over £11.8 billion a year.
A spokesperson says that the department appear to be obsessed with centralising as much work as possible into large urban centres where traditionally staff are more difficult to recruit and retain. Smaller offices, such as that in Yeovil tend to have a far more loyal and in turn more experienced and knowledgeable work force. Service to the public now appears to be an afterthought, leaving staff feeling frustrated at their inability to help people who are often the most vulnerable members of society. PCS members will be exploring every available avenue to influence this shortsighted threat and keep the Yeovil office open. One thing is certain, if we do nothing we will lose, if we do something at least we have a chance.
Mark Hoskins - PCS Office Secretary on behalf of HMRC Yeovil Campaign Committee.
Labels: news
Yeovil Labour Party policy meeting
Once the meeting is concluded the response will be sent on to be voted on at the annual conference.
Labels: news
Why are the unions involved in learning?
It has been said that Learning is a big issue facing unions today. It is important to our members in the same way that decent pay or reasonable hours of work are important. Put simply, with lifelong learning our life chances are better. Without it we are at risk in the labour market and disadvantaged in the community.
The rapid development of new technologies and the acceleration of economic and industrial change have had enormous effects on the Labour market. The modern Labour market demands the constant improvement of existing skills and the acquisition of new skills, throughout our working lives.
With education and development we have more choice, and hence control, over the way we earn a living and the way we live our lives. With greater choice we need not be the victims of change. Indeed we are in better position to understand and influence the course of that change. We can feel more secure.
Research shows that people with relevant skills are more likely to stay in employment and are paid better for what they do. The benefits of learning, both in terms of job security and in terms of lifetime earnings, are huge:
- Male graduates earn 50% more than those with A levels
- Female graduates earns twice as much as women with no qualifications
Union Learning Reps (ULRs) in the workplace are helping their members to get on in their current jobs, to gain new skills when facing redundancy, and to learn about new things just to make them better citizens. Many of the people being helped by ULRs had poor experiences of education in the past.
Where ULRs are active in Branches and Workplaces they can also help unemployed and retired members with learning issues.
To find out more go to http://www.unionlearn.org.uk.
Labels: campaigns
Howard "Andy" Andrews, Spanish Civil war International Brigader
If Andy was here, he would say: ‘what are you making all this fuss for: don’t mourn, organise!’ So with that in mind, some of us are going to the town of Chard this evening to campaign against the British National Party: you are of course all welcome to join us.
“The heights that great ones reached and kept, were not obtained by sudden flight: but they while their companions slept, were toiling onwards through the night.”
But just who are these great ones? Why are they great?
Howard Andrews was the most remarkable person I have ever known: WILL ever know. He didn’t drink, smoke or gamble: apart from that he led an exemplary life!
There is a word that symbolises his life: that word is ‘theatre’: the theatre of war; the theatre of the hospital, and the dramatic world events in which he played his parts.
Howard Andrews was by conviction an atheist; a republican; anti-British Empire; anti-fascist, a socialist and a communist. He was also a soldier, a medic, a trades unionist and a pretty good sportsman: soccer, cricket, tennis, athletics, and in retirement, of course, bowls at Vivary Park.
Howard Andrews the atheist centenarian fought the most astonishing battle with death: in the two and a half years I was his friend he was never well: he had at least two different cancers and untold other problems. Yet he never complained: he worked out his own remedies: I have been there when he told me to dispose of five of the six bottles of tablets he was supposed to be taking: and he DID get better! He was independent right up to his last hospital days, and even there, he had a plan: it involved his young friend Emy smuggling in some eggs and mushrooms: he was going to get out of Musgrove and get better despite their catering!
Howard Andrews the republican came straight out of Oliver Cromwell and the Levellers: when a senior civil servant called on what he thought was a routine visit to inform Howard of the Queens impending telegram, he was shocked to witness Howard’s polite declining:
“Me and the Royal Family havn’t been friends for ages.’
Howard Andrews became an instant anti-imperialist as an 18 year-old soldier at Bombay docks: when he stopped and watched all those poverty-stricken Indian women, some with babies on their backs, coaling a ship with 1cwt baskets on their heads, he said to his pal Dave Munday:
“Well if this is the ‘Jewel In the Crown’ of the empire they can keep it!”
Howard Andrews the anti-nazi, anti-fascist helped to run the Mosleyites off the streets of Kilburn, suffered a bad beating at the hands of both blackshirt thugs and the police at the Albert Hall in August 1936, and, 71 years later, was carried through the Glastonbury Festival mud to insist on linking his old struggle with ours against the BNP.
Howard Andrews the British Soldier saw and survived some terrible things: near Quetta he intervened to stop some poor Baluchis torturing a hyena: in Shanghai once his detail was to empty a shack packed floor to roof with 30 or more dying and dead civilians, victims of a Civil War in 1927 between Mao Tse Tung and Chaing Kai Sheck; later in the same city, he saw a homeless mother and baby frozen to death in the snow. In Northern France with the British Expeditionary Force he was sat in a truck in a barn and when a German shell exploded, was blown sky-high through the roof, truck and all, twenty feet up, and landed back on the ground still in his truck with only cuts and bruises. Waist high in water on a Dunkirk beach, he remembers the peculiar sound of machine-gun bullets hitting the water around him: he was picked up by a destroyer, which promptly sank, and was another twenty minutes in the water till a trawler found him.
Howard Andrews the trades unionist was sacked from so many jobs, but always kept that Transport and General Workers Union card: later, from 1955, organised workers at the Taunton Hospitals so effectively that as the COHSE Branch Secretary built up his branch from five to 105 and received the union’s merit badge. In his last few years he went once again, as guest of honour, to trades union meetings. My favourite was the South West TUC Pensioners Conference in Weston-super-mare, 2006: Chief Constable Colin Port of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary was having an easy time answering questions on delinquency and mobile buggy licences. After half an hour of this I could see Andy getting more and more disturbed. Finally, he had had enough. He rose very slowly to his feet, pointed at Mr Port, and said:
“More than seventy years ago, on an unemployed demonstration in Hyde Park, your men batoned me to the ground. The police were anti-trade union then, and have remained so, whatever government has been in power. I ask you, sir, when is it ever going to end!”
You can read for yourself in the Service Card what his Spanish Civil War comrades thought of Howard Andrews. Just three stories from Spain: Andy was at the front during heavy shelling, and just as he was about to carry a badly injured man back to safety, he heard an officer shout: ‘Anyone who turns back will be shot!’ Andy turned and carried his man back.
Andy was outside his field hospital when one of Mussolini’s bombers launched a raid: first time, the pilot dropped a hand grenade: second time he used the plane’s machine gun, and as Andy dived behind a wall, and shouted ‘duck’ to a doctor who he saw at a window, bullets sprayed that wall and shattered every window in the building. Fascist airmen were under orders to target anything republican, even hospitals.
Third story and a disturbing one: Andy was on duty with Dr Tudor Hart when two strangers came past, inspecting. Andy carried on working. Later that day, Dr Tudor Hart gave Andy a week in jail, for refusing to salute an officer: no matter that salutes were unknown up till then. When Andy came out from that jail, his clothes were covered in lice, so he stripped off and threw them in the river.
70 years after, he went back to Spain and I went as his carer. It was the only time being with him disconcerted me. Can you imagine the angst of a proud man, namely myself, when day after day dozens of sexy young Spanish women are rushing straight past me to hug and kiss a man 45 years my senior? Truly, a working-class hero is something to be!
And on the plane back to Bristol, he said: ‘That was the best week of my life!’
Howard Andrews the soldier never killed anyone: as a medic he helped to save hundreds of lives. For him, war was ‘organised murder.’ For 17 years he was a pharmacist’s assistant in Taunton Hospitals. No wonder, in his final years, as an active member of Taunton Peace Group, he planned to link NHS cuts with the obscene spending on new Trident Nuclear Missiles, in a leaflet he was going to give out at Musgrove Park.
Howard Andrews was an extremely generous person; I have sat next to him at more than one meeting when he volunteered to fund a leaflet or coach from his own pocket. He was also modest, shy; funny, serious, steadfast in his socialist beliefs, courageous, and, above all calm in a crisis. In India, Shanghai, Spain, and Dunkirk, Andy passed that test every time. He was a wonderful man, my friend Andy: a good man and I believe a great one: if we wish to honour him, we can campaign to persuade Taunton, as well as Willlesden, to grant Howard Andrews, posthumously, the Freedom of this old Somerset Borough, and I look forward to the day when hundreds of us can march, banners flying, through Taunton on Howard Andrews Day.
“The lives of great ones all remind us:
Yes! We can make our lives sublime
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.”
Members of the Yeovil TUC attended his funeral (pictured here Bill Byrd and former General Secretary of the TGWU Jack Jones). See also:
Interview with Andy in 2006.
Coverage in the Western Daily Press and the Independent.
Labels: news
Report on our open meeting on the Yeovil “Sports Zone”
The main speaker in favour of the Sports Zone was Councillor Tim Caroll leader of SSDC. The main speaker against the scheme was Ashey Strelling of “Save Mudford Recreation ground” (SMR). Ashley’s presentation was supported by Jacky Martin and Viv Cornelius.
Ashley’s team circulated handouts to all present and Viv Cornelius talked about some of the historical background to the site. She said that the site was given under covenant that it only be used for playing fields.
Jacky Martin claimed that the Sports zone would be partly financed by selling off other assets; that there are other locations for it, part of Agusta/Westland airfield or land by Yeovil Town Football Club; could it be part of the development framework?
There were two appraisals of the site. The first was in July 2007 and the consultation period was to close 24th August 2007. The report concluded that the proposal was not suitable to the site. A scaled down proposal was made and second appraisal made. The second report accepted that it could be built on the site but it was “not ideal”. A number of people felt they had not been properly consulted and children were targeted with a survey aimed at adults.
Yeovil College seem to be the main beneficiary and land around the College was sold off for executive housing.
SMR collected over 5,000 signatures opposing the sports zone being built on Mudford Recreation ground.
How will it be financed and why has other sites been discounted (e.g. the showground)? It is likely that other green spaces will have to be sold to pay for it (e.g. at Turners Barn and Yew Tree).
SSDC Council leader Councillor Tim Martin replied to the points raised.
The council did an audit in 2006 as part of the 20year development plan for the Town, and their research has it that the greatest deficiency of sports facilities occurred in Yeovil. The 20 year plan envisages an increase of the Town’s population of the current 44K to about 77K. The council also want to take account of “Olympic legacy funding”.
As for discounting the other site, planning regulations (PPS6) say they have to prove why they cannot use sites in Yeovil before they consider the wider area. AgustaWestland will not sell part of the airfield having already sold all spare land for development.
No decision has yet been made; the whole plot will not be concreted over. The existing football pitches will be retained and only 23% of the land will be built on. Late summer will see the results of the full survey.
There are similar projects under way in Taunton, Bristol and Plymouth. If it went ahead, completion would be sometime in 2012.
Points and questions
These came mainly from objectors to the proposal focussed mainly on the loss of a substantive piece of open space and traffic congestion and related problems. There would be a car park of 400 spaces.
Asked if the revised plan was purely to justify building on Mudford Rec Councillor Carroll said that the revised plans allow outdoor facilities to be dispersed around the area. The Councillor also assured us that Yeovil College would not have preferential treatment when it comes to use of the site.
That a big opportunity was lost at the time of the decision to build the current Golden Stones fitness centre; that it was too small, and went way over budget – is a similar mistake to be repeated? What was a green site before Goldenstones will now be sold for general development, will the same happen at Mudford Rec? .Councillor Carroll replied that ‘wet’ facilities’ (i.e. swimming pools) never make money; Goldenstones is heavily subsidised and other ‘dry’ facilities help reduce the subsidy.
Traffic congestion on Mudford Road could be a showstopper. Traffic is bad throughout Yeovil but Councillor Carroll said that Reckleford and Babylon Hill and “Bermuda triangle” is to be sorted when the Reckleford gyratory is straightened.
Labels: news
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