This is a
blog for my musings on Green campaigns and Trade Union activity in and around
Bristol as well as the wider political scene nationally.
Social Murder, Health and Safety, and Trade Unions
APRIL 16, 2015WHQUICKUNIONS, CUTS, MEDIA,INTERNATIONAL MEMORIAL DAY, WORKERS MEMORIAL DAY,HEALTH AND SAFETY, RANA PLAZA, MARIKANA, MARIKANA MASSACRE, SOCIAL MURDER,CHARTISTS, ACCIDENTS, TRADES UNIONS, LABOUR MOVEMENT
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Early photograph of the last mass
Chartist meeting of 150,000 at Kennington Common to deliver their final
petition, allegedly signed by 6 million, 1848
The
Chartists were the first mass working class movement in the world. They had
local groups across the country; organised petitions signed by millions, and
held mass demonstrations attended by hundreds of thousands in a time with much
more limited communication networks and in an extremely repressive atmosphere.
Their
strength came from the general revulsion at the extremely pronounced levels of
injustice and exploitation inherent in the early factory system. The average
working day was in excess of 12 hours, often in cramped workshops with few
breaks and no health and safety standards. The employment of children was
widespread. This practice came under increasing criticism from the 1780s but it
wasn’t until 1833 that effectively enforced legislation was brought in to
regulate child labour.
Boys working in a textiles mill
The
1833 act only outlawed children under the age of 9 (except in the silk
industry) from working, and limited them to working 8 hours a day till they were
14 (and then 12 hours till they were 18). Workers received abject poverty pay,
had no weekends or holidays, no maternity leave or sick pay or any real rights
at all. After a long day they returned home to squalid slum housing to
subsist off of terrible diet of the cheapest food. As in the less wealthy
countries of the world today (where the majority of our cheap mass manufactured
goods are produced) rates of accidents, injuries and mortality were appallingly
high.
The
Chartists termed the tens of thousands killed and maimed in the all-pervasive
industrial accidents of their era ‘Social Murder’. These were the thousands
unnecessarily killed each year by a society structured to pursue profit no
matter the human (or environmental) cost. Thankfully, due largely to the
efforts of past generations organising in their workplaces, communities and in
political parties, we now work in far safer and more humane working
environments.
But
even today in the UK around 1,500 people die in largely avoidable accidents in the
workplace. A further 50,000 die prematurely every year as a result of long term
I’ll health acquired at work. Many more are seriously injured. In my branch of
UNISON (representing around 1,500 people) sadly in this last year alone one of
our members has been left permanently disabled and another with serious long
term health issues.
According
to our Health and Safety officer Mark, both of these incidents were caused by
actions worse than negligent on the part of management. The drive to cut
costs by minimising legislation and cutting corners, that can leave workers
seriously disabled or worse, makes this kind of behaviour increasing likely in
the UK today.
Rates
of industrial accidents have been gradually rising over the last few years as
both Health and Safety regulation and the budget of the agency enforcing them
have been cut by the Coalitions. For years now right wing comics and TV
personalities – like Clarkson – have demonized health and safety and turned it
into a joke. This works in much the same way that media demonization campaigns
have paved the way for cuts to the wider welfare state in general. The way
health and safety discourses are conducted – couched in the terms of the names
and dates of the legislative framework that created it – can be tedious. But it
is an extremely important part of workplace safety and the rights that the
labour movement has won us over generations of struggle.
Whilst
sectors of the media denigrate health and safety legislation, and the coalition
government carries out savage cut, employers are going on the offensive.
Bristol made national news when revelation of the extensive use of a black list
of health and safety stewards and activists by leading Bristol construction
companies came to light. To maximise profits by undercutting health and safety
standards at least 3,214 health and safety activists (ordinary people concerned
about their welfare at work) were victimized and had their ability to
work and provide themselves with a limiting severely curtailed. The list most
famously was in use on the construction of Cabot Circus.
We
don’t have to look to the past to see how the all-consuming drive to profit
inherent in our economic system, when not tapered by strong unions and health
and safety legislation, leads to misery. Our contemporary world is full of
depressing evidence. The working conditions in the parts of the world where
most of the Wests cheap manufactured goods are produced are atrocious. Rates of
injury and death are shockingly high and reminiscent of our early industrial
past. Often adults and children work side by side in appalling conditions.
We
don’t like to think about this blood involved in the production of our
cheap consumables. Occasionally workplace conditions are so despicable an
‘accident’ of such awful magnitude happens and pierces the veil of silence
carefully constructed around it. As in 2013 when over 1100 people
were killed and a further 2500 injured in Rana Plaza Bangladesh when a
sweatshop producing goods for a consortium of western companies collapsed. Just
before this disaster the building had been deemed safe twice by inspectors
working on behalf of Primark.
Rana Plaza just after its collapse in
2013
We
may not like to think about these extreme levels of exploitation and death
inherent in the international trade system; but the role of western
multinationals in setting up this very system to supply our domestic
consumption patterns is central and makes us all partly responsible. Rana Plaza
is a case in point. In the wakes of the disaster the International Trade Union
movement created and signed an accord on minimum safety standards in the
garment industries of Bangladesh and Cambodia.
So
far only three American owned factories have signed up. We see the violence
inherent in the system flare up as Western Corporation repressively extract
resources all across the global south. Indigenous leaders are murdered as they
try to protect their lands from invasive oil drilling. Workers striking for
better wages and conditions are brutalised by police and private guards. The
Marikmana massacre of late 2012 is the most vivid and bloody
example. 38 strikers were killed and at least 78 more were wounded when
security and police representing the London based Lonmin mining corporation
opened fire on them. The revelation that most of them where shot in the back
whilst fleeing make it all the more horrifying.
Armed police with the miners they’ve
just killed
If
we want to change this horrifying state of affairs, changing the way we
interact with our economic system to become more ethical consumers is a step in
the right direction. But small scale individual change is never enough. We need
to organize in our communities, workplaces and political parties to protect our
health and safety and our living conditions; and we need to push these
organizations to restructure the economic system that causes so much global
misery.
Unions
are especially relevant in this struggle for the role they play in protecting
conditions at work; their role in the international labour movements attempt to
improve conditions in the global south; and their involvement in community
campaign to protect health and the environment. This last point can be
illustrated locally by the part played by unions (including UNISON I’m happy to
say) in supporting Avonmouth residents successful campaign to stop the building
of a biomass energy plant. Large scale Biomass energy production accelerates
deforestation and climate change, and emits toxic dust clouds that seriously
impact health and can cause cancer.
Finally,
to commemorate the victims of industrial ‘accidents’ around the world every
year we celebrate International Workers memorial day. This year on the 28th of
April we’ll be marking the occasion with a march from unite the union’s Tony
Ben house (setting off at 12:30 pm) to a wreath laying in Castle Park, and a
talk in the evening. The message is remember the dead and fight for the living.
Come along, join and get active in a union, and make sure you use your vote
this May (there’s less than a week left to register).
Flyer for the Bristol hazards group
International Memorial Day talk
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