What Price The Truth About The Annual Death Toll Of UK Workers?

In a week in which International Workers Memorial Day took place, the CWU's Annual Conference in Bournemouth were not allowed to be reminded of the true death toll of workers that occurs every year across the world. Instead, CWU delegates at the fringe meeting and all those at the conference concerned about health and safety at work have been left generally with the HSE's official figures for the UK; which are inacurate to say the least.

The NW BT Unions Health and Safety Coordinating Committee wished to put out a conference flyer at the Union's Annual Conference Health & Safety fringe event but were refused permission, despite being polite in asking first.

The flyer seemed pretty harmless to the Committee, but a refusal with no explanation was the response!

As the flyer contained these words:

“The UN International Labour Organisation estimates that worldwide more people are killed by work than war every year: a minimum 2.3 million killed by work every year In UK for 2012/13 the HSE provisionally reports 148 fatalities in work-places; however this figure excludes the majority of workers killed at work, and ignores all those dying from poor working conditions”

the only conclusion that can be drawn is that for some reason the Fringe Meeting organisers found them to be objectionable!

Website Editor Chris Ingram comments in a personal capacity:

"Maybe the flyer was considered to be too political, despite the fact that this current Government are playing political games with the lives of UK workers.

It is time the whole of the Trade Union movement started to take the issue seriously and step up national campaigns to educate the public as to what is being done by this government in smashing the structure of health and safety law protection for workers against employers who don't give a damn for the safety and welfare of their workforce.

A good start would be the publishing of the true death toll figures, as opposed to the HSE's false statistics!

The fact that an extremely active health and safety committee, for that is what the NW BTU Health and Safety Co-ord is; can be stopped, without reason, from putting out a flyer at a fringe meeting is astonishing.

Perhaps the person(s) responsible can provide the reason for this undemocratic decision. I will be only too happy to give the reasoning publicity via a follow-up news item!"

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