DEFENDING HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: march 2012 :: RMTnews 16 Over 150 delegates attended the tenth national Health and Safety advisory conference held at Doncaster Trades Centre which saw the launch of the union’s new health and safety reps’ charter. Delegates also took up the chance to get a limited edition enamel badge marking the tenth anniversary of the first health and safety conference held in Birmingham. Introducing the charter, senior assistant general secretary Mick Cash predicted it would be a great success. “This charter is about organisation, about bread and butter stuff at the workplace. “One of the crucial things I want to get across is that the government is trying to do away with health and safety rules by claiming they were all ‘red tape’. “It is a really difficult time for us and we have a broader role and not just at the workplace and the charter will help to emphasise that. “It is about organisation, it is about representing and ensuring we get safety in the workplace but it’s also about working in the community and the wider world to help stop these attacks on working class people,” he said. RMT Parliamentary Group chair John McDonnell MP also warned delegates that “this government is coming at us in terms of health and safety”. Earlier conference chair Jim Philp had invited delegates to stand for a minute’s silence in honour of all the workers needlessly killed in avoidable accidents over the last twelve months. RMT president Alex Gordon spoke about the recent eighth anniversary of the tragic incident at Tebay that saw four RMT members lose their lives. “Since this entirely avoidable tragedy there have been a further 23 incidents of runaways on the nation’s railways and this fact alone highlights the continuing disaster of privatisation,” he said. Alex spoke about the need for Network Rail to give a definitive date for the installation of secondary protection and warning systems that would prevent incidents like Tebay from happening again, and which, scandalously, still have not been introduced. He spoke of Britain’s need for a “national transport renewal plan”. “We need to renew, refurbish and rebuild Britain’s transport infrastructure, and we need to do it safely with proper occupational, environmental and social planning. “This cannot be left to the market and the privatisation of Britain’s railways, a large part of our ferry industry and our bus industry, is an enormous obstacle to the refurbishment, renewal and rebuilding of our transport infrastructure. “Unfortunately, the current ConDem coalition is making £9 billion of cuts to public transport spending and the Labour shadow transport secretary confirmed that she intends to keep £6 billion of these cuts if Labour is elected. “RMT will continue to put forward the alternative of public investment in a fully re- nationalised, publicly controlled transport network,” he said. The theme of this year’s conference was Occupational Health, back to work – not out of work. Speakers included Dr Steve Boorman – Occupational Health Director for Abermed, Tim Springett – Head of Employment at the Chamber of Shipping and Sharon Allaway a health risk management consultant. The speakers participated in a lively panel discussion with RMT Health and Safety Reps’ and debated a range of related subjects. Conference motions also dealt with a range of DEFENDING HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK A packed health and safety conference in Doncaster marked its tenth year with a workplace charter