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Hazards Conference condemns work and well-being report
13 August 2008
Delegates to the July National Hazards Conference approved unanimously a statement highly critical of Dame Carol Black's 'Working for a healthier tomorrow' report, launched in March.
The conference brings together over 500 safety reps from trade unions across the UK. Dame Carol Black heads up the Government's Work, Health and Well-being programme . Her report was published earlier this year following a call for evidence on the issues around work and health. The Hazards conference statement came from a debate on the report. It agrees with the TUC that the best way to improve workplace health is to prevent workplace accidents and illnesses, and that improvements would require better rights for safety reps and more and better resources for rehabilitation and health and safety enforcement.
The campaign statement calls for 'a good occupational health strategy to prioritise the prevention of work related ill health and establish an adequately funded, worker centred occupational health strategy and service free of charge to workers. Such a strategy would give full recognition to, and enforcement of, existing safety representatives' rights and would allow safety representatives to participate fully in all aspects of health and safety in the workplace. It would give more resources to the Health and Safety Executive and local authority enforcement to provide more preventive enforcement with higher penalties for breaches in health and safety legislation and it would recognise that breaches of health and safety laws are criminal offences which should be properly enforced and resourced as other areas of the criminal justice system.'
The conference resolution criticises Dame Carol's report as 'a tool for driving workers back to work taking no account of the causes of their ill health'.
Click here to view the Dame Carol Black report 'Working for a Healthier Tomorrow' and here to view the Hazards conference response .
The Government's response to the recommendations in Dame Carol Black's report is expected in October.l
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