Report criticises unions

A new HSE publication has openly attacked the role of unions in improving health and safety.

Using soft people skills to improve worker involvement in health and safety champions the new “individualised industrial relations climate–, promoting worker involvement in health and safety through channels other than collective organisation.

“Trade unions can present obstacles to embedded employee involvement in environments where their representatives act as the sole conduit between workforce and management on all issues,– it says. “The health and safety agenda becomes an elite activity, and employees do not have ‘permission’ to use their initiative in the formulation or the management of that agenda.–

Despite some faint praise for other union initiatives, the report can only feed an anti-union climate within health and safety.

It is available at www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrpdf/rr580.pdf