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TUESDAY AFTERNOON SESSION Congress reassembled at 2.15 p.m.
Construction Industry Advisory Committee
Mr. D. A. Horton ( Transport Salaried Staffs' Association); I wish to speak to paragraph 152 and, with the President's permission, also to make a couple of comments in relation to paragraph 153. As a civil engineer working with British Railways, I work in an indus- try which has the double hazards of plant and equipment which are common on construction sites, and rail traffic, including high-speed trains. The trade union Movement, our union and no doubt every union represented in this hall today, has spent a lot of time, effort and money educating our people on the require- ments of the Health and Safety at Work Act and how it works for our benefit. We have pressurised management, we have pressurised Government and we have pressurised various employers to introduce the necessary health and safety provisions for the benefit of all the people we represent. In the construction industry and the railway industry in the area in which I work, the employers both British Railways Board and the various engineering contractors I deal with have gone out of their way to supply adequate equipment for personal use for safety. I refer here to items such as safety helmets, ear muffs, goggles and the high visibility jackets which you see rail- waymen wearing up and down the country.
But one of the main culprits contributing to personal injury are our own members them- selves, who do not know about the equipment which is available to them and who refuse to wear that equipment. Time and again I see people working on the railways without jackets and I see men on construction sites working with heavy firing plant without safety helmets. I feel there is a need for Congress and the General Council to bring home to the mem- bers, through affiliated unions, using satura- tion publicity and stressing through the safety representatives and the safety committees, the responsibilities which we have, as trade union members, to ensure that all workpeople utilise to the full the safety equipment which is pro- vided for their benefit.
Proposed Abolition of Protective Legislation
Mr. A. R. Smith (National Union of Tailors & Garment Workers) moved the following:
Congress notes with regret the report of the Equal Opportunities Commission on health and safety legislation and their recommen-
dation that, with few exceptions, the hours of work provisions in the Factories Act should be abolished.
Congress considers that a first principle concerning the working life of all must be their health, safety and welfare and reiterates its long standing opposition to the wholesale abolition of Part VI of the 1961 Factories Act Furthermore, Congress recommends that discussions be initiated with the Health and Safety Commission with a view to extending the protection at present afforded to women on night work and shift work to men and to those categories of women at present with- out such protective legislation.
He said: My union has the second highest per- centage of female members. It also has the largest number of female delegates to this Congress. Nine of our 16 delegates are female
· and not one of them is there as the result of special provision; each is there because the women in our union have asserted themselves. But maybe we should not be complacent because we all know we have to give special consideration to the methods we use in draw- ing women into activity in the trade union Movement. In moving this motion I do not want to recite the legislation that is supposedly there to protect people at work, because if I was to get into that recital we would be appal- led to find the lack of that protection in 1979, and we would soon begin to witness how the attack on the protection of workers is not con- fined just to Jim Prior and the Government's direct attacks through proposed industrial relations legislation. It is much more insidious. And behind it all is the deliberate hand of the CBI, the Conspiracy of Business Interest.
Jim Prior's proposals on industrial relations, that Harry Urwin referred to, emanate from the CBI. Proposals of the Equal Opportunities Commission also reflect the thinking of the CB1. Geoffrey Howe, not in this dream world. but in his nightmare world perhaps, with his free zones, where such protective legislation as currently exists is to be done away with as an incentive to industry, is yet another exam- ple of CBI thinking and CBI initiative. One begins to wonder where the real power in Bri- tain lies, with the elected Members of Partia- ment or with their financiers in the various institutions in Threadneedle Street. The cam- paign they have waged relentlessly against protection for women and young persons has been very cleverly done. There are innocent articles in women's magazines; a letter
477