Monday 28 November 2011

To return home safe

Colleagues,

Just announced is the outcome of the Lofstedt review which prefigures the Coalition's bonfire of health and safety law in the UK.

Coming on the back of my last post about protected conversations it is clear that the trajectory of the Tories is a wholesale attack on the relatively minor protections that UK workers have in comparison to workers across the Continent.

Details of the Lofstedt predictions on what must go are in a BBC news item: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15919238

What is clear is that, regardless of what conclusions Lofstedt has arrived at, the Tories are adopting their historic 'it's elf and safety gone mad' mantra citing banned conkers and village fetes as a smokescreen for further weakening the HSE and freeing up employers to quite literally get away with murder.

And where, oh where, are the Labour Party in response? Answers on a postcard - if you do indeed get an answer.

By the way, the title for this post comes from a quote I remember being cited years ago by MSF (and I am sure used across the movement) of the simple position we take as trade unionists on the issue of workers' health, safety and welfare, which is that the simple guarantee a worker wants from their employer is to be able to return home to their home and family as safe and free from ill-health as they left home that morning.

Follow this story, the outcomes will not be good.

In Solidarity

Ian

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