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Hugh Robertson

Hugh Robertson

Hugh Robertson is the Senior Policy Officer for Health and Safety at the TUC. He also sits on the Board of the Health and Safety Executive and the European Agency for Health and Safety. He is chair of the Occupational Diseases working party of the European Commission’s Health and safety Advisory Committee and is Vice-chair of the Panel of Experts on Occupational Diseases of the International Labour Organisation. Hugh is a Chartered Fellow of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health.

http://www.tuc.org.uk/h_and_s

  • Hugh Robertson Hugh Robertson

    High heels: Lies, damned lies and politics

    heels

    It is always said that you should never let the truth get in the way of a good story, and while we might expect that of some tabloids, what about when it is politicians? Today the health and safety Minister, Chris Grayling is making a speech to the Policy Exchange where it’s reported he will say:

    “It baffles me that at a time when we face a huge jobs challenge across Europe, that someone thinks it is sensible for the EU to be spending time legislating to ban high-heeled shoes in a hairdressers.”

    Now the implication of this is that the EU is planning legislation on this. Well that is news to me, and it is news to the European Commission.

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    Posted on April 18th, 2012 by Hugh Robertson filed under: Rights at work

  • Hugh Robertson Hugh Robertson

    Workers’ rights to compensation under threat from all sides

    Workers are facing an onslaught by the government on their ability to claim compensation. There are three proposals to strip us of our rights being considered at the moment.

    While chief executives seem to manage to get huge sums of compensation when they are sacked or resign after screwing up, us lesser mortals have only been able to look on with envy. However when we are sacked unfairly we have at least been able to rely on our unions and, as a last resort, an Employment Tribunal. The government wants to either stop that or make it more expensive. As well as changing the time you have to have been working for your employer to be able to make a claim to an Employment Tribunal from one year to two years they plan to charge us for the pleasure of seeking any form of justice.  Applicants will be obliged to pay the costs of an unfair dismissal claim which will only be refunded if the employee wins.

    The government is proposing to charge £200 to lodge a claim and £1000 for a  hearing, They have given another option of an upfront fee of £500 to access the Tribunal that can rise to £1750 if the employee is claiming more than £30,000 in compensation. The fees will be even higher if a worker believed they were sacked because of their sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation or religion and belief.

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    Posted on February 1st, 2012 by Hugh Robertson filed under: Rights at work

  • Hugh Robertson Hugh Robertson

    Health and safety culture? I wish…

    Today we have seen a speech from David Cameron and an article by him in the London Evening Standard, saying he wants to end the health and safety culture and the burden on business that it creates. They represent probably the biggest verbal assault on health and safety by a senior politician for many years, which is saying something, given that only last summer the PM was blaming the English riots on our health and safety culture.

    I wish we had a health and safety culture in the UK. Instead we have two million people with an illness or injury caused by their work, and every year well over 20,000 people who die prematurely because of their work. The vast majority of these could have been prevented had their employer had taken the correct precautions.

    Both the speech and the newspaper article are a response to grumbles from the business lobby and the rantings of right-wing commentators.

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    Posted on January 5th, 2012 by Hugh Robertson filed under: Rights at work

  • Hugh Robertson Hugh Robertson

    Safety: The ‘union effect’ is as strong as ever

    You would have thought that if there were a proved way of cutting workplace deaths by a half, and making cutting all injuries by about a quarter then employers and the Government would jump at it.

    Well there is and it is called union health and safety representatives.

    The TUC has just updated and republished its report on the effect that unions have on health and safety taking into account new research over the past six years and surprise, surprise, the new evidence shows that the Union Effect is just as strong as ever. Among the new research is a government report that claims British Industry saved between £181m and £578m each year as a result of lost time reduction from occupational injuries and work-related illnesses of between 286,000 and 616,000 days as a result of trade union representatives.

    Yet in the workplace, instead of finding employers jumping over themselves to encourage union representatives and joint safety committees, health and safety representatives still find it an uphill battle to get their employers to give them access to time off or to consult them. A TUC survey of health and safety representatives showed that time off was the biggest problem for representatives, including time off for training. The survey also found that only 28% of employers automatically consulted their representatives on a frequent basis.

    However despite the problems that union health and safety representatives have they still make a massive difference. The real problem is in those workplaces that are not unionised. For several years the TUC has called on the government to give workers in non-unionised workplaces the right to safety representatives and safety committees, but even better than that would be for the government and employers organisations to encourage workers in these workplaces to join a union. Unfortunately, I doubt that is going to happen so instead we are going to have to do it ourselves by using reports like “The Union Effect” to show workers that, if they value their health and their safety they need to join a union!

    So use this publication in your workplace, and with any organising and recruitment activity. It really  says it all. The Union Effect can be read or downloaded at the TUC website,  and also don’t forget the report on the union advantage in other areas that the TUC produced in 2009 “The Union Advantage”.

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    Posted on July 13th, 2011 by Hugh Robertson filed under: Rights at work