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Posted By David Brede
I have received the message below from the MEP for East Midlands, Glenis Willmott
Health and Safety June 2007
When I became an MEP I said that I wanted to carry on with the kind of work I had been doing as a trade union officer – to make a difference to people’s lives in a practical way. As a substitute member of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee in the European Parliament I am able to have an input into issues very close to my heart and where I have long experience.
In the Employment Committee I am rapporteur on the Community Strategy on Health and Safety at Work 2007-2012. This means I will be leading for the European Parliament and drawing up its view. It is my first rapporteurship, and it will be a chance to look long term at what EU priorities should be in this area for the next 5 years. The Strategy is part of the new EU Social Agenda and emphasises that 'prevention pays off' – fewer accidents mean more productivity. It looks at new threats to health and safety and those who are not adequately covered, as well as ensuring that health and safety standards are applied properly.
Allied to this, I am also the shadow rapporteur for the Employment Committee Opinion on "Community Statistics on Public Health and Health and Safety at Work."
The report is about the systematic production of statistics in the fields of public health and health and safety at work in all EU countries - information on health care, causes of death, accidents at work, occupational diseases and other work-related health problems and illnesses. This report ties in with my report on the Health and Safety strategy. Accurate data is essential so that we can decide what action needs to be taken in these fields.
One thing I am keen to highlight is the need to collect gender specific data. Women can be susceptible to different types of occupational diseases to men and can have different types of industrial accidents. So better account needs to be taken of those health and safety aspects which especially affect women.
I am consulting widely for this report and I have already had talks with the GMB and the European Trade Union Confederation, as well as with Bill Callaghan, Chairman of the Health and Safety Executive. If any of you have any experiences in your job that you think might help inform my work, please do get in touch. I hope that my work will have an impact on real people’s lives.
Best wishes
Glenis
I am sure we can all contribute to Glenis's initiative.
David
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Posted By Merv Newman
All very laudable, but I can see a lot of H&S people trying to keep up with at least three sets of statistics : UK, (so as to compare with historical trends),OSHA (24h "recordables" per 200 000 hours for our American Head Office) and EU (24h LTIs per 1 000 000 hours)(the latter being broken down by age and sex)
Has anyone done a cost/benefit analysis on this proposal ?
And will the UK definitions of Lost Time Injuries or Reportable Incidents be changing to come in line with everyone else ?
That should stop all those "is it RIDDOR" arguments. Won't it ?
Merv
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Posted By steve e ashton
Only if it didn't happen on the way to work...
Then again - maybe it is time we had a 'common' European wide definition and accounting scheme for work related injury and illness. And maybe even allows some comparison with the figures from the US. Or even worldwide.
But PLEASE - don't lets go down the "is it a first aid case or a medical treatment case..." That's even worse than "is it RIDDOR or not?"
I think this could be a laudable approach from the MEP - David will you be co-ordinating an IOSH response or is down to individual members to contact? We have all complained in the past about Eurocrats making senseless laws for us - this may (just may!) be an opportunity to get in at the outset of revisions to the way we do things to make them better.
Steve
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Posted By Jay Joshi If the objectives of the proposed strategy are to be believed, it has very little to do with accident & illness reporting systems, but more to do with effective implementation of existing EU legislation and the recognition that "health" related matters still have a long way to be addressed. The strategy also considers the "simplification" of application of the directives without reducing the level of protection. It also includes effects of social and demographic change The HSE takes the lead and I doubt that at this stage there it is a consultative document. The details are at;- http://www.hse.gov.uk/ab...s/june07/oshstrategy.htmhttp://ec.europa.eu/empl...007/feb/commstrat_en.pdf
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Posted By David Brede
I had not intended to co ordinate the IOSH response but encourage a debate and inform the MEP of the views of the professionals
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