24 April, 2011
Commonality of April 28: Unions Make Work Safer
Every April 28, the labour movement remembers the fallen. April 28 is known as International Commemoration Day for Dead and Injured Workers and is marked by trade unions and safety and health groups in over 140 countries.
Globally, 2.3 million workers die as a result of their work every year, according to the ILO. The ICEM considers this number, shocking as it is, to be understated by at least a factor of ten. Many millions more are injured or made ill due to occupational disease. Every one of these deaths, injuries, and illnesses is needless; in fact, senseless.
ICEM affiliated trade unions work in some of the most dangerous and toxic workplaces on the planet. High-profile tragedies such as explosions and fires at oil and gas facilities, out-of-control nuclear power plants, methane gas blasts and cave-ins at mines, and untold number of equipment failures in manufacturing that cause death, limb loss, other injuries are all part of a sad culture that the ICEM aims to reverse.
The continuing toll of deaths, injuries, and illnesses is quite simply unacceptable to the ICEM. That is why the ICEM is there to assist its affiliates on any occupational health and safety issue. It is the reason that the ICEM has led the way in bringing occupational health and safety into Global Framework Agreements. It is why the ICEM has an ongoing campaign for the ratification of ILO Convention 176, a long-standing project on HIV/AIDS, and it is also why the ICEM engages other international organizations for better standards and better cooperation in occupational health and safety.
What would make workplaces safer? While employers and governments spend enormous sums seeking magical solutions, the ICEM knows that the answer is really quite simple, although burdensome to some in implementing: workers have rights, employers have obligations.
Here then, is the answer.
• Unions make work safer, therefore the first and most important workplace health and safety programme stems from a strong union. To achieve this, we demand respect for the ILO Core Labour Conventions, especially those protecting freedom of association, the right to organize unions, and the right to collective bargaining.
• Workers’ rights: the fundamental rights of workers with respect to occupational health and safety include: the right to know about the hazards of work and to receive training in how to do the job safely; the right to refuse – and shut down, if necessary – unsafe work; the right to participate in the formulation and implementation of workplace health and safety policies, programmes, and procedures. This right is best achieved through a Joint Health and Safety Committee (JHSC) that plays a central and obligatory role in an employer's internal responsibility system.
• Employers’ obligations: Employers should concentrate their efforts on making work safer. This means process safety management, identification and use of best available technologies, industrial hygiene, ergonomics, occupational disease recognition and investigation, and a precautionary approach to chemical, biological, physical and other hazards.
• Employers’ prohibitions: Employers should not be allowed to use methods and practices whose principal purpose is to blame victims, or suppress the reporting of accidents and artificially improve statistics in order to gain improved workers' compensation experience ratings, premium reductions and rebates, and public relations points. This includes prohibiting behaviour-based safety programmes, workplace drug and alcohol testing (particularly post-incident), safety incentives that encourage under-reporting of accidents, and waging fights against recognition of workplaces diseases.
The theme, “Unions Make Work Safer” on April 28 and on every work day, is sometimes known as Workers’ Memorial Day. It is fitting because a major role that trade unions play in everyday work-life is to monitor – and improve – occupational safety and health. Trade union activists are encouraged to find an activity and to take meaningful action to better safe work practices through the strength of their union.
Québec Labour Federation CSN Takes Heroic, Historic Stand on Asbestos
In the 2010 special ICEM newsletter on April 28, the ICEM stressed that the key to getting a global ban on asbestos lies in Canada. If Canadian support for the asbestos industry fails, then a global asbestos ban will succeed. Everyone who cares to examine the evidence by now knows that the link between all forms of asbestos (asbestosis, mesothelioma, other cancers) is irrefutable.
An important step forward was taken by the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux (CSN) at the union federation’s 11 March congress. The congress decided to withdraw the federation’s traditional support of the Québec asbestos industry. This was truly an historic and courageous stand, in a province where the asbestos industry is so closely tied with labour history.
Claudette Carbonneau, President of the 300,000 member organization, told the congress: “Québec, like many advanced industrial societies, has been shaken by the use of a resource which sows death. If health and safety conditions do not prevent these deadly illnesses in Québec, it is difficult to pretend that there can be safe use of asbestos in developing countries.”
However, for every step forward, there seems to be at least one step backwards. Just this month, the Québec government approved a C$52 million economic aid package to expand the Jeffrey asbestos mine, whose products will be exported principally to India, Indonesia, the Philippines and other Asian countries. Proof, once again, that the industry would not be viable without heavy government subsidies.
Meanwhile, the body which regulates place-names in Québec has given permission for the regional body known as MRC de L’Amiante to delete the Amiante (Asbestos) from its title and rename itself “MRC des Appalaches.” So, evidently there are people even in the region of Québec that mines asbestos who are perhaps disgusted by the shameless hypocrisy of politicians and profiteers and would prefer not to be associated with the export of this deadly fibre.
Mine Safety and ILO Convention 176: A Continued Priority for the ICEM
ICEM, as the pre-eminent global union for miners, continues its campaign for the ratification of ILO Convention 176 on Safety and Health in Mines, and the adoption of its associated Recommendation 183.
Although progress is slow, the Ukraine was finally persuaded to ratify Convention 176 in February of this year. The ICEM has meetings fixed or planned in several countries this year to push for ratification of this important ILO instrument.
The year 2010 saw the world witness the dramatic rescue of 33 trapped miners from the depths of a mid-sized copper mine in Chile. It also saw the gruesome deaths of 29 miners at the Pike River coal mine in New Zealand, caused perhaps by ventilation fans located inside mine shafts instead of outside. Twenty-nine miners also died in the US on 5 April 2010 at the Upper Big Branch mine in the state of West Virginia, a tragedy that saw mine owner Massey Energy and its CEO shift blame – unbelievably – to the stringent safeguards enshrined in the US Mine Safety and Health Act.
Click here for ICEM 176 Campaign
There were also mass mining deaths in Russia, Turkey, and the Ukraine in 2010. Mine deaths still occur on a weekly basis in China, and in South Africa, despite a somewhat decline from the highs of 2006-2008, mining deaths still occur regularly and public statements of satisfaction and accomplishment by the Chamber of Mines is delusional and fraught with contempt.
The tragedies from 2010, as well as the deadly coal mine blast in Pakistan just last month, prove there is much left to be done to make the world's mines safer. It can start with ratification of Convention 176. But it can only occur with full implementation and then practice of the convention’s principles.
Convention 176 demands that employers perform risk assessments, and control identified hazards at source, through good engineering design and through personal protective equipment. Mines must be properly engineered, designed, and constructed for safety, with provision of at least two separate means of exit and adequate communications systems. Sufficient ventilation with monitoring for contaminants and fire prevention, detection, and firefighting systems must be provided. Emergency response plans must be developed and maintained, and if serious dangers are detected, operations must be stopped and workers evacuated. Workers are to be provided with information and training on the hazards and how to work safely.
Accidents must be investigated and corrective actions taken. Workers have the right to report, and receive reports on, accidents and dangerous occurrences and hazards. Workers can request workplace inspections from employers and the regulatory authorities. Workers have the right to refuse unsafe work, and remove themselves from dangers. In addition, workers can select workplace health and safety representatives and they have the authority to participate in investigations and inspections, monitor health and safety matters, have recourse on advisers and experts, and consult with the employer and the government regulators.
Within Convention 176, governments are expected to create a legislative and regulatory framework that protects workers’ safety and health. This is to be accomplished by requiring employers and workers to comply with the specifics of ILO Convention 176. In addition, the responsible authorities are expected to maintain adequate regulatory mine supervision and inspection, and require the reporting of accidents and maintenance of statistics.
Mining is one of the world’s most dangerous occupations and regulatory safeguards are essential. The following list prepared using mostly ILO statistics from the UN agency’s LABORSTA database indicates the most dangerous countries for miners and workers in quarrying, as ranked by fatal injuries per 100,000 employees for a period from 1999-2008.
1. Turkey
2. Korea, Republic of
3. China
4. Pakistan
5. Cyprus
6. Kyrgyzstan
7. Togo
8. Hong Kong, China
9. Ireland
10. Taiwan, China
11. Costa Rica
12. Lithuania
13. Portugal
14. Ukraine
15. Philippines
16. Spain
17. Nicaragua
18. Chile
19. Argentina
20. Malta 21. Moldova, Republic of
22. India
23. Brazil
24. Bulgaria
25. United States
26. Tunisia
27. Estonia
28. Zimbabwe
29. Slovenia
30. Burkina Faso
31. Denmark
32. Romania
33. Czech Republic
34. Canada
35. Finland
36. Italy
37. Kazakhstan
38. Myanmar
39. Austria
40. Poland 41. France
42. Latvia
43. Slovakia
44. Croatia
45. Azerbaijan
46. Australia
47. Egypt
48. Japan
49. Sweden
50. United Kingdom
51. Sri Lanka
52. Hungary
53. Norway
54. Trinidad and Tobago
55. Bahrain
56. Belgium
57. Luxembourg
58. Macau, China
59. Mauritius
60. Singapore
The list, however, does not contain relevant statistics for all countries, thus the rankings of China, Ukraine, and Chile are estimated based on reports from private websites. There are no reliable estimates for Russia even though Russia is an extremely important mining country.
A few explanations are in order in assessing the list. First, even the ILO database which is the most authoritative on such matters, is extremely unreliable. The ILO can only cite what member countries send them. And then there are difficulties from under-coverage, such as most countries report only compensable deaths, to under-reporting, such as many deaths, even traumatic ones, are simply not recorded as occupational. Then there is outright fraud, since without question it is in the economic interests of employers to under-report. It is also in the political interests of many countries to under-report.
Furthermore, occupational disease claims more workers' lives than traumatic accidents – even in hazardous occupations like mining. Occupational cancer alone almost certainly kills more miners than accidents, and there are many other diseases (lung, skin, nervous system) that are fatal but are not cancer. These diseases are universally under-diagnosed and under-reported.
In the country ranking above, Turkey and Korea become the countries with the most dangerous mines, ahead of China. This may seem surprising, but Turkey, which is not a major mining country has both an extremely poor safety record and perhaps a better record of reporting than other countries on the list. As for China, the statistics are estimated from on-line sources of unknown origin and can only be assumed to be gross underestimates. The real number could be double, or even triple, the reported rate.
Finally, mining statistics often can be found in the form of deaths per million metric tonnes of ore/coal produced. This type of reporting tends to skew the statistics so that low-productivity mining nations such as China look relatively worse compared to highly mechanised mining nations such as the US, because more miners are required to produce the same number of tonnes of product. An example of this type of rating can be seen here.
The ICEM prefers to look at mining fatalities per 100,000 workers because what matters to a miner in considering whether a mine is safe or unsafe is whether he or she goes home intact at the end of the day. The number of tonnes mined in that day is secondary to that fact.
Overall, safety statistics revealed above should be considered to be of only the most marginal value.
ICEM Will Continue to Press Chile over Mine Safety Standards
While basking in world admiration following the successful rescue of 33 workers from inside the San José copper mine, Chile President Sebastián Piñera announced on October 18, 2010, on BBC’s HARDtalk, to a global television audience, that his country would ratify ILO Convention 176 and reform a disjointed national mine safety programme “within 90 days.”
It turned out to be a lie.
Near that 90-day mark in mid-January, ICEM President Senzeni Zokwana and General Secretary Manfred Warda met with senior government officials in Santiago and were told there is nothing on the agenda to reform internal safety standards or to adopt global standards. And, indeed, since there has been no movement inside Chile for reform, except from the trade union federations there who are now working hand-in-hand with the ICEM.
In February, the ICEM organized a three-prong campaign to pressure Piñera to fulfil his promise. Over 4,000 messages were delivered by ICEM affiliates and our friends in the labour movement! The Piñera government is being forced to answer embarrassing questions about why his government has so far reneged on a promise made in the celebratory aftermath of the San José rescue.
The ICEM continues to be optimistic that the Chilean government will remember how important reality is; that the country is only one mining accident away from losing the good-will and technical credibility it won by marshalling a rescue of historic dimensions.
And the Piñera government must face another reality: if it is world-class in any way, it is as a world-class producer of minerals, especially copper, and that means it must develop and implement world-class safe mining practices. So far it hasn’t.
San José Mine Rescue
In the days just preceding Piñera’s brash HARDtalk declaration, the President fell back on a culture dating to the Pinochet regime. In the commission he set up to investigate San José, no trade union representatives were invited to sit on it. ILO Convention 176, the Safety and Health in Mines Convention, states that workers and their trade unions shall participate in mine inspections and accident investigations.
At San José, Union No. 2 of Campañia Minera San Esteban repeatedly warned of safety hazards and once even presented a legal challenge to close the mine. But the common refrain from both government and industry when unions warn on safety and health conditions is that the union’s duty is to negotiate economics, not to take part in safety or health matters.
After a miner was killed in 2007, San José was shut for a brief period by SERNAGEOMIN, the National Service of Geology and Mining. But it quickly reopened on orders from another government official who failed to read the closure report, and relied on the owner’s pledge that deficiencies would be corrected.
One such pledge was to install a ladder through a ventilation shaft as a second exit, a standard in Convention 176. That was not done, there were no follow-up inspections, and the lack of a second exit, in fact, led to the 69-day entrapment of the 33 miners.
SERNAGEOMIN is not a health and safety inspectorate. It plays that role, but so do bureaus inside six Chilean ministries. Chile has overlapping safety agencies inside the six that cover all sectors of work. None of them have judicial powers to enforce the few regulations there are in mining and all are without the technical capabilities to inspect and prevent accidents before they happen.
In short, all prerequisites of Convention 176 are missing in Chile: regular inspections, set procedures to report and investigate dangerous occurrences and accidents, trade union consultation, regulatory bodies with the authority to shut dangerous mines, the right to refuse unsafe work, workers’ ability to select their own safety representatives, and employer obligations to provide training. Convention 176 places responsibility on employers to not only remove workplace hazards, but to remove the causes of those hazards.
Despite the Chilean government’s “head-in-the-sand” approach to mine safety now that the cameras and microphones so prominent at San José have disappeared, the ICEM will continue to press Piñera alongside a renewed coalition we have developed with the mineworkers’ federations of the country.
Royal Commission Convenes over Pike River, New Zealand, Mine Deaths
A preliminary hearing of the Royal Commission over the Pike River mine disaster opened in Greymouth on April 5. The inquiry, which will begin hearings and full deliberations on 23 May, will run for 15 weeks.
On November 19, 2010, a massive methane gas blast inside Pike River Coal Ltd.’s colliery killed 29 miners, including 11 members of ICEM affiliate Engineering, Printing, and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), in the worst Kiwi mining disaster in 119 years.
This month’s preliminary hearing began with a one minute silence in memory of the 29. It was also marked by the unsettling announcement by receivers of the bankrupt company that it did not have the funds to fully participate in the inquiry. An attorney for the receivers, PricewaterhouseCoopers, said its priority is to repay secured creditors, not to provide witness briefs and compilations of others documents to the Royal Commission.
The Commission, headed by Judge Graham Panckhurst and including Stewart Bell, Queensland, Australia, Commissioner for Mine Safety and Health and a recognised expert on methane gas in coal mines, will conduct the inquiry under four phases: context, search and rescue, what happened at Pike River, and policy aspects.
Parts of those issues were introduced on April 5. An attorney representing the EPMU said New Zealand’s mine regulations were two decades behind developed mine safety programmes, such as what exists in Australia. “Our members want to see a significant increase in the safety and health standards required for working in mines,” said Nigel Hampton, representing the EPMU.
The EPMU is also asking that the expertise and counsel that exists in Australian mineworkers’ unions and the mining industry be heard before the Commission. One question that surely will arise is why an Australian mine rescue team that was on-site 36 hours after the blast occurred on 19 November was sidelined by local police who were supervising the rescue.
Another will be the location of large ventilation fans inside the Pike River mine, an unusual placement for electrical charged equipment when methane gas is prevalent. Initial reports state that an electric outage shut the two ventilation fans in the minutes before the explosion.
The issue of deception and disrespect to families in the days following the November 19 explosion will also be heard. An attorney for the families said at the opening that families only want the truth and clarity on how and why the disaster happened.
In his opening statement, Judge Panckhurst said the mission is to find out “what happened at the mine, why it did happen and what can be done to prevent it happening again. In short … why and what must change for the future good.”
The mine was sealed in January and the bodies of the 29 have not been recovered. PricewaterhouseCoopers has assessed the mine, which contains seams of premium coking coal, to be worth NZ$6 million, but it could take 20 times that to re-start it. The global firm is hoping to have it sold in June.
Health, Safety Changes Mirror Con-Dem Policies in UK
Recent administrative and other changes regarding health and safety governance in the UK clearly reflects the policies of the governing Tory, Liberal Democrat coalition. In late March, Employment Minister Chris Grayling announced a shift of emphasis from safety and health monitoring by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in order to ease regulatory burdens on business.
The package of proposed changes includes eliminating unannounced workplace safety inspections and placing more emphasis on high-hazard worksites and those with histories of unsafe conditions. The ruling government will also conduct a review of all existing health and safety regulations with the notion to scrap measures that are not needed and those that place an unnecessary burden on business.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) disagrees with the new mandate, seen as a means to chop government spending out of the HSE.
“The possibility of an unexpected visit from either the HSE or a local authority safety inspector helps keep employers on their toes,” said TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber. “Even now, workplaces can go decades without ever seeing an inspector.
“If government cuts to HSE funding do result in fewer safety inspections, unscrupulous employers will simply assume they can get away with taking risks, without fear of ever being prosecuted.”
Another change in the UK is a Ministry of Justice proposal for reform of local courts structures regarding who is responsible for legal fees in workplace compensation and other cases. The proposed change, which is under public consultation until June 30, would require plaintiffs that win their cases in courts to carry the burden of paying their own legal fees, regardless of damages.
This “no win, no fee” proposal is seen as means to reduce the number the number of filings against employers by workers who suffer industrial accidents in order to eliminate a so-called “compensation culture” in the UK. The Ministry of Justice’s aim is also to push more cases out of courtrooms and into mediation. The TUC’s Hazards Campaigns sees it as a sham since less than 10% of all workers injured at work receive compensation and, as well, free legal counsel for victims seeking workers’ compensation has been cancelled by the state.
On another note in the UK, this one a milestone, the first company to be convicted of corporate manslaughter under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act of 2007, which became effective in April 2008, occurred on February 15, 2011. Cotswold Geotechnical Ltd., a small geological company, was found guilty by a jury of Winchester Crown Court, Hampshire, in the negligent death of 27-year-old Alexander Wright. In 2008, Wright was working alone in an unsupported 12-foot pit. He died from asphyxia when soil from the collapsed pit buried him. The court fined the company £385,000.
Handling and Use of Pesticide Glyphosate: Things to Know
Glyphosate, known by its International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) name phosphonomethylamino or acetic acid, is manufactured for use as a herbicide. Depending on specific purpose, it may be used as such, or as an ammonium salt, isopropylamine salt, or potassium salt.
It is most well-known as the main active ingredient in the chemical company’s Monsanto's "Roundup." But since the Monsanto patent has expired, it is also used in similar formulations by a number of manufacturers. It works as a plant hormone inhibitor, by interfering with this metabolic process in plants, it kills the plants.
In handling glyphosate, it is essential to have an up-to-date Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS), which can be obtained from a company that manufactures products with it in it. It is also essential to minimise exposure through engineering controls, isolation, effective ventilation, and where worker exposure is unavoidable, personal protective equipment.
There are two stories on glyphosate, one by its original manufacturer, Monsanto, and unfortunately accepted by most regulatory agencies worldwide, the other by opponents of glyphosate use, who claim much information about it has been suppressed.
As Monsanto tells it, glyphosate is generally considered to be one of the safest herbicides. There is a fairly well-established potential for temporary skin and eye irritation, and gastrointestinal irritation if ingested. These can even be severe if the chemical is encountered in its pure form and not promptly washed off the skin. A survey of recent MSDSs reveals that it is officially considered practically non-toxic, and, in several animal studies, has produced no officially recognized evidence of carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, or teratogenicity.
However, MSDSs are often less than complete. There are some rather alarming suggestions of a link between glyphosate exposure and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) by some researchers. Monsanto's claim that there is no severe adverse effect has been traced back to Swedish researcher Hans-Olov Adami, who in turn has been linked to a consulting group called Exponent.
Exponent has ties to Monsanto and other chemical companies and is known for its rebuttals of concerns about chemicals in the environment. Findings about glyphosate that contradict Monsanto have rarely been given much attention.
There are suggestions that it may be an endocrine disruptor or a genotoxin. For example, Gilles-Eric Séralini, a French biochemist, has claimed that his studies of the effects of glyphosate on human embryonic cells, fetal cells, and placental cells; and that glyphosate is likely an endocrine disruptor in humans. This effect was shown for “Roundup” formulations, rather than pure glyphosate. Indeed, one of the issues with any chemical testing is how it will affect humans or the environment in the complex mixture of chemicals encountered in the real world, as compared with its study in isolation in a laboratory.
The statistical significance of the association between glyphosate and NHL is low. Monsanto's defenders have suggested that errors in the assessment of exposure levels, or chance, are the likely explanations for the association between glyphosate exposure and NHL. As for Séralini's observations, it is unclear whether the effects Séralini observed were due to the glyphosate, or the surfactants (detergents) that are always part of a pesticide formulation.
Regardless, from a pure occupational health point of view, the best way to handle any chemical is with caution. Minimise the opportunities for worker exposure with the best possible engineering designs that isolate the chemical from human contact. Install effective drainage and ventilation systems to safely remove any chemical that escapes from the closed system. Finally, since despite these precautions some chance of exposure may remain, appropriate personal protective equipment must be provided and maintained.
The safest level of exposure is always no exposure.