Number of people harmed by jobs increases

The lack of plans to reduce workplace ill health and injury in the Young report is striking considering that official Health and Safety Executive (HSE) statistics for the year ending March 2010 reveal an increase of 100,000 in the number of people saying they have been harmed by their jobs. That brings the total number of workers who currently say they are still suffering from an illness caused or exacerbated by work to 1.3 million. Meanwhile there has been a decline in the number of prosecutions and convictions for breaches of health and safety law.

And nowhere in Lord Young’s report is there any mention of occupational stress, top of the list of safety concerns identified by trade union reps in the recently published biennial TUC safety rep survey.