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Government Needs Your Help Doing Its Dirty Work As the attack on health and safety starts with the review by Lord Young, the government has opened up its second front on its war against workers health and safety rights, with the launch on Thursday 1st July of its new Website entitled Your Freedom.
Interestingly enough getting onto the new website is very difficult as it seems frozen at present, but despite that the government claims that is has received some 2,205 ides so far and lists smoking, business regulation, as two of its main areas of concern for those wishing to repeal legislation and regulations. This after only one day and little publicity and difficulty in accessing it for the last 24 hours! How many ideas were put on the website by default prior to it being launched? Some of the main subjects to be tagged so far seem to be in line with the regulation and laws that the Tory party have already stated they wish to abolish: health and safety, smoking, business regulations per se, equality, human rights, oh and of course that overarching biggy - Red Tape! Some of the ideas call centre workers may come up with could be under the subject of Freedom: right to go to the loo without being harassed or having to ask permission, right to not being abused by customers. Engineers may wish to suggest: the right not to be electrocuted at work, the right not to be crushed beneath a telegraph pole. Office staff may decide that not being injured at work from falling equipment or material and not being subjected to work related stress are important to them. Pregnant workers may be concerned about not having to lift heavy materials, or remain on their feet all day at work, and the right not to be discriminated against. That said, there is no intention to improve the lot of the everyday working person despite the well written introduction. The website makes it perfectly clear that it is only interested in ideas to cut laws and not make any new ones, nor enforce existing good laws. It will be interesting to see what comes from those wishing to do the government's dirty work for them in the same way that the civil service have been asked to nominate those colleagues who should be sacked first in order to introduce efficiency savings, oh not to mention loading up the work levels done by those lucky to have a job who are left. The website address is http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/ and checking it now and again may give you the idea as to how the attacks by this government on the rights of working people to be safe at work is being helped by those wishing to see a free for all when it comes to business deregulation and health and safety at work. Finally, the idea of scrapping completely, the HSE is of course one of the first ideas to be proposed on the website, but so far has no votes for or against the idea. But one can be forgiven for wondering who it was that added that suggestion within the first 24 hours of an inaccessible website being launched? Source: NDS / Unionsafety |
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With a title such as that you can be forgiven for thinking this is a government responding in a truly altruistic manner toward the needs of the UK and its people. However, looking into the detail of the website shows its true aim of pitting worker against worker and ensuring that business concerns are not only rammed down the neck of the people of the UK by the media, but that we are all conned into believing that the removal of laws and regulations regulating business will be of benefit to the working people of this country.