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.

What is happening is that discussions are taking place between the employers’ and workers’ representatives at European level through the organisations Coiffure EU and UNI Europa Hair & Beauty over proposals that they want to put to the European Commission on improving the appalling occupational health issues in this industry. So what we have is employers asking for minimum standards to protect their staff. Pretty responsible I would say.

These proposals have not gone to the Commission yet and there is no suggestion from them that they plan any kind of legislation. Also the proposals do not mention high heels. They do mention preventing skin disorders, musculoskeletal diseases and the needs of pregnant workers. Having read the proposals they make some genuinely positive proposals around issues like substituting dangerous chemicals and protective equipment. The nearest it gets to high heels is a suggestion that:

“Workers shall wear suitable clothes for their activities or workwear clothing and, in particular, shoes with non-slip soles.”

I first saw this story when it appeared in the Daily Mail last week. It also got picked up by The Sun. That was when I decided to check it out and within five minutes found out it was rubbish. Now you would have thought that the Health and Safety Minister, with a whole Government department at his disposal could have done the same. In fact you would have thought that, as health and safety minister, he would have known what legislation was currently being considered by the European Commission, so either he has not got a clue what is going on in his own area, or he know that this story was just made up by the tabloid press yet decided to run with it anyway.

I am not sure which is worse.

At a time when we are seeing huge attacks on health and safety in the media, and when workers are facing increased risks and pressures in the workplace we need a minister who is going to stand up for the area he is meant to be protecting. I have no problem with politicians, or anyone else criticising stupid decisions when they happen, but they also have a responsibility to take on the press when they make up these stories as a form of entertainment.

The problem is not that health and safety has gone mad, it is that employers are able to destroy the health of their workers with impunity because those who are meant to be protecting us are no longer willing to stand up for us. As a result, when sensible groups of employers, like those in hairdressing, are prepared to put their head above the parapet and say that they want to do something about it they will be far less likely to do so in the future for fear of getting ridiculed.

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.

At the same time they are trying to prevent us claiming compensation if we are injured or made ill through work caused by the employers’ negligence.

Under proposals going through Parliament at the moment, union members will be among the millions who are deprived of the ability to claim compensation, or who will lose damages.  As many as 25% of injury claims will not be brought.  Those that proceed might lose up to 25% of damages for the success fee and further substantial reductions for required legal expense insurance.

Many people will no longer be able to obtain representation, particularly for low value/complex cases. However although a claim of £3,000 or £4,000 may be considered to be low value by the Government, it is not low value to a cleaner who earns £6 an hour and represents four months wages.

Finally they are proposing to slash the payments that you can get under the criminal injuries compensation scheme. These payments are certainly not huge – often around a thousand pounds, but they can go to shop workers or security staff who are assaulted. Tube workers who have had to cope with the trauma of a suicide jumping in front of their train have also benefited.

That is now to change. In a consultation document issued this week the Government says it wants to remove around 17,000 victims of violence crime every year from the scheme including those with injuries like a smashed hand or an injury to the knee that is serious enough to require surgery.  In addition many of those who still qualify will find the compensation cut, so even people with minor brain damage face a cut in their payments.

It is not a coincidence that all these proposals are coming together. The government has been wound up about a non-existent compensation culture by insurance companies who are happy to take insurance premiums but have taken a series of court cases to try to stop them paying out when things go wrong, including several aimed at asbestos victims. The coalition government is also hell-bent of removing as many employment rights as it can, so expect more to come.

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.

Among the claims David Cameron makes are that “an excessive health and safety culture that has become an albatross around the neck of British businesses” He also claims that businesses “battle against a tide of risk assessment forms every year”. This just shows how out of touch with the reality of working life the Government is. The truth is that the vast majority of employers never carry out any kind of written risk assessments and, for those that do, there is easy-to-understand advice available on how to do them from the Health and Safety Executive.

The fact that none of the press have so-far challenged his claims, and instead just report them straight or with supporting commentary, shows that if you say something often enough people just accept it, even when it is clearly rubbish.

He also attacks compensation claims in an equally unfounded way. Every government report on the UK’s supposed compensation culture has shown it to be a myth, and in fact claims have been declining over the past decade. Despite this the government seems hell-bent on trying to stop workers injured by their employers’ negligence being able to claim compensation. They are currently trying to put through legislation that will make it much harder for injured workers to get legal support in taking a claim.

It’s clear that Downing Street does not have a clue about what life is like for the millions of ordinary people who work in shops, offices, schools, factories, call centres and other workplaces across the UK. Instead of headline-grabbing claims, what we need is a commitment to protect workers with proper enforcement and penalties against those employers that flout the law and put lives at risk.

However the attacks on our safety and compensation cannot be seen in isolation. It is a part of a wider attack on workers rights more generally. As well as the attacks on our pensions and wage freezes, they are trying to make it easier for employers to sack us and, at the same time, make it more difficult or expensive to take them to an employment tribunal.

In response to these attacks, the TUC is organising a day of action to defend health and safety. It will be held on 28^th April, which is International Workers Memorial Day. Within the next few weeks we will be producing a range of materials for use in organising events for the day.

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”.