“Unionised workplaces are the safest workplaces.”
That’s the claim made by Cath Speight, Unite national officer.
Despite offering no evidence to substantiate her claim, Ms Speight went on to argue the case for proactive health and safety inspections of Britain’s farms.
With what the union describes as a “staggering” one in five workplace deaths happening on Britain’s farms, Ms Speight said:
“Unite has repeatedly called for the introduction of roving safety reps to visit farms. These shocking statistics are the biggest argument for that issue to be raised again.
“Other high-risk industries, particularly construction, have seen death and accident rates fall over the years. But this has not happened in agriculture and, for many years now, Britain’s farms have been the most dangerous workplaces in the land.
“It is the responsibility of the employer, the farmer, to see that all safety procedures and legislation are followed and that all employees fully understand safety instructions, including causal and migrant workers whose first language may not be English and may have difficulty understanding what they are being told.
“If roving reps could visit and see that farmers are complying with health and safety legislation, we believe this high level of accidents and deaths would be reduced,” she concluded.
However the government has already stated in its policy document ‘Good Health and Safety, Good for Everyone’ that, despite farming being a cause for concern, agriculture is an industry “where proactive inspection is unlikely to be effective”.
