"Benefit cuts put frontline housing staff in danger"

A good article in Guardian Housing network page.  Except Councils and Housing Associations shouldn't just wring their hands about the obvious and foreseeable increased risks to their staff .

They should be actively consulting with staff and trade unions on revised risk assessments and violence at work procedures.

Health and Safety enforcement agencies (the HSE for Councils and Councils for Housing Associations) should also be making sure that staff safety is being taken seriously.

Housing managers do not realise that they face imprisonment and unlimited fines for serious breaches of health and safely laws (and that they could even lose their homes since the employer and insurance providers cannot pay such fines).

"Housing providers have become de facto enforcers of many benefit cuts and are finding themselves at greater at risk of harm.
 
The recent shooting of a housing association employee and bailiff during an eviction should be of real concern to housing providers, and a reminder that our frontline workers often have to deal with the consequences of policies created in Westminster.

Reform of our welfare system was long overdue, but the pursuit of savage cuts is having a profound impact. Housing associations are well-placed to understand and explain the real effects of welfare reform in action. This is an important part of our role; acting as advocates for our customers, many of whom are not able to speak out for themselves, is one of the ways in which we can influence policy and support social justice.

Benefit cuts are putting many people in severe debt and, as that debt is often owed to their landlord, an increase in evictions is inevitable.

Housing providers are not the authors of these policies, nor their advocates, but have become the de facto enforcers of the new regime, and it's our colleagues who are having to bear the consequences of people's anger.

'Why are you doing this to me?'

At Curo housing association, our money management adviser has had several meetings recently with tenants in tears who, faced with benefit cuts and caps, don't know how they will pay their rent or clear their existing rent arrears. A question often asked is: "Why are you doing this to me?"
The adviser told me: "In my experience, the tenant will pay the creditor who shouts the loudest, leaving shortfalls elsewhere to cover the rest of essential household expenditure."

As housing associations do not chase debts as aggressively as payday lenders, banks or mobile phone companies, rent arrears can build up as tenants fail to prioritise rent payment when faced with threatening notices from others.

We will do all we can for customers who turn to us for help, but we also have to deal with the realities of running a business and have a responsibility to safeguard the financial viability of our organisations, for the sake of all our customers and for those who will need affordable homes in the future. Evictions are an inevitable consequence of the welfare reforms, and it is our staff who come face to face with the backlash.

We're dealing with rising numbers of people wishing to move, increased arrears and greater demand for debt advice. On an individual level, where the real story is, we're seeing greater levels of anxiety and stress as people, many of them vulnerable, try to cope with serious hardship.

We are concerned for those who are really struggling to make ends meet, but also concerned for our own frontline staff who put themselves at risk of harm through their association with policies they had no part in forming.

Victor da Cunha is chief executive of Curo housing association".

SERTUC Safety Rep Seminar: 31 October 2013

If a "Healthy Workplace"is your thing then keep the date clear for this Safety seminar.

Metropolitan Housing Shooting

This is an article that I wrote today for our branch newsletter. "The exact details of what happened yesterday over the shooting of a Metropolitan HA housing officer and a bailiff during an eviction are unknown.

The use of guns against housing staff is thankfully incredibly rare but don’t forget the recent survey by "Inside Housing" that found yet another year on increase in assaults on staff. In the meanwhile an incident such as this concentrates minds.

Local stewards and safety representatives should be thinking of asking management when did they last review staff risk assessments and safety procedures? Have staff and the union been properly consulted on these documents? Are staff reps invited and enabled to attend safety committees? Do you have a register of residents who may be violent? Is this register up to-date and most importantly is it being used? Is there adequate resources made available for health and safety in your organisation?

The branch is planning to hold a training workshop for all our reps. Details will be sent out soon.
Remember a unionised workplace is a safer work place. The more of us in the union the safer all of us will be in work. If you are interested in being a UNISON safely rep contact the branch. Check out the excellent safety resources on the UNISON website here.

#UNDC13 Health & Safety Fringe - thursday lunchtime fringe

The NDC health and safety fringe was titled "Safety in Numbers" with presentations on campaigning in hospitals and Glasgow City branch on workplace stress.

There was some disquiet on the perceived lack of emphasis by some delegates on health and safety in conference business and the UNIZONE. While I think we need to do far more on safety issues in recent years it has raised its profile at conference. We, the activists just need to do more to increase this profile further.

One suggestion was that many members do not appreciate "elf & safety" at work but when you ask are they concerned about stress, violence, overwork, bullying...? they "get it". Another was that a set time for conference ought to be set aside to debate workplace health and safety issues.

It’s criminal what this Government is doing to the victims of violent crime

Picture is from UNISON Greater London Health & Safety network meeting last week with guest speaker(4th from right back) Gerard Stilliard from Thompsons Solicitors. 

Every 3 months, following the meeting of our regional committee on safety, all London UNISON branch H&S officers are invited to attend a briefing by Thompsons on various safety related issues.

Gerard had been asked to speak about changes to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme in 2012.

Now, I knew that this Tory led government, with the active support of the Liberal Democrats, had made changes to the scheme, but what I didn’t realise is just how bad these changes were, especially for those at work who are attacked and badly assaulted.

Gerard explained that under the new scheme, eligibility and awards have been slashed. Any tariff awards less than £2500 have been removed entirely. While compensation for the rest of claims have been reduced on average by 50%.

Which means that in the past if you were for example a healthcare assistant and you had been badly beaten up by a patient, which took up to 3 months to recover, you would have received under the old rules £1750 in compensation. Now you would get nothing.

In the past if you had been a teaching assistant and been assaulted and punched so hard in the eye by a pupil that it resulted in permanent blurred or double vision, you would have received £4,400 to £8,200.  Now you would only get 1/2 to 2/3rds of that amount. Remember this is for permanent injuries! Was £4,400 under the old system too much?

Even worse, it use to be the case that loss of earnings awards due to injury were related to what you actually use to earn before the assault. Now it is only at statutory sick pay levels.

So if a Park warden had been so badly beaten up by drunken yobs that he or she could never return to paid work. Under the 2008 rules if the warden was aged 50, earned £15,000 per year and expected to retire at 65 then they could have expected to have received £225,000. Under 2012 rules they would only get £67,000. A loss of £158,000.

The government has also made it far difficult to claim, reducing time limits, not allowing managers to report cases to Police and slashing time limits for appeals.

Of course it is not only employees who are suffering from these cuts but all victims of violent crime.

In a civilised society the State has an absolute duty to protect all its citizens from criminals and deal responsibly with the consequences of this criminality for those who have suffered from it. The only citizens this Government gives a damn about are the 13,000 millionaires who will be given £100k plus tax cuts in 4 days time.

True Price of Cheap Fashion: 120 burnt or jumped to death at Bangladesh Texile Factory Fire

Check out TUC Owen Tudor post at Stronger Unions on the latest fire massacre at a Bangladesh textile factory.

It is estimated that 120 workers are dead, many of them young women who died behind locked fire escapes while some even jumped to their deaths to avoid being burnt alive.

Owen is completely right that the best way to protect these vulnerable and exploited workers are strong and independent trade unions.

But this does not let British, European and USA companies which invest in such factories or source cheap clothes in Bangladesh to sell in the West off the hook. Nor pension or insurance companies who make money from these companies or to be frank the consumers who buy products without knowing the conditions that the human beings who sweated to make them endure. Have we all got blood on our hands?

Tazreen Fashions who owns the factory apparently makes goods for "H&M, Walmart, Denim, Marks and Spencer, Carrefour, IKEA and others". It is alleged that it was widely known that this factory was unsafe but nothing was done.

Next week there is a meeting of the UNISON London Pension network and I will be asking members to bring up this up with their fund managers. What are they doing to make sure that the companies we invest in make sure that such things cannot happen again? This is an investment as well as an ethical issue. Not only should pension funds (and pensioners) not want to prosper from investing in companies that kills its workers but there is now overwhelming evidence that companies that act responsibly produce superior long term financial returns. 

We need to make sure at a minimum that all the companies in the supply line we invest in recognise and support trade unions (Please note this also applies to all those UK organisations who disgracefully refuse to recognise and bargain with independent trade unions at home. What message are they sending?) but also that they make sure that act at all times responsibly.  

On Wednesday evening at the LAPFF conference I spoke to a Governance adviser for a leading fund manager, who told me that due to rising wages in China, mass textile production is moving to cheaper zones such as Bangladesh. So the problem is likely to get even worse. 

On Thursday evening at the LAPFF conference hotel there was a false fire alarm at 4am. While I am not for a moment comparing things with that at Tazeen Fashions, it did make me think at the time what I would do if I was trapped by raging fires and locked safety doors in my 3rd floor room. 

Unless we all do our bit as consumers and investors to demand effective change I have no doubt that I will be reporting on something equally horrific sometime soon.  

Tory Return to Victorian Health & Safety Values at Work? Sign e-petition against

Some more dangerous nonsense. This Tory led Coalition is now proposing to get rid of an important health & safety protection that was first introduced in 1898.

What next? if you fall ill, become old or unemployed - will they be reintroducing the workhouse? I shouldn't give them ideas I suppose.

Sign the e-petition to force a Parliamentary debate and pass on the link.

"The amendment to Section 47 of the Health and Safety Work Act 1974, has been added to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill at the eleventh hour.

The amendment would mean:

- Employers would no longer have a strict liability for the health and safety of their workers, for the first time since 1898.

- Workers could not rely on an employer's breach of health and safety law to win a personal injury claim, they would have to provide proof of negligence.

- Enforcement of health and safety law would be increasingly left up to a significantly weakened and less effective Health and Safety Executive.

- Employers will increasingly hide behind the defence that complying to health and safety regulations was not "reasonably practicable".

Please rescind this amendment and preserve workers' rights to a safe workplace".

Accidents at work in Lancashire - article by Peter Billington (LATUC)

According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), in 2006/07 more people were injured in accidents at work in Lancashire than in any other area of the North West, or the whole country. In Lancashire in 2006/07, 816 people suffered from workplace accidents, putting the area at the top of the national league for major and fatal injuries reported to the Health and Safety Executive. In 2010/11,