Deregulation Kills

Safety law deregulation – such as that which the Howard Government is proposing - leads to more workplace injury and deaths, according to a British report.

The Crime and Society Foundation report says in the UK, safety inspections are low and enforcement is even lower, despite more than a thousand employees dying at work each year.

It says this approach has been influenced by businesses' push for low deregulation.

"The weight of available evidence now indicates that the one most effective means of making workplaces safer is for these to be unionised and to have union-appointed safety representatives," the report states.

"This means challenging those ideologues who portray the protection of workers and the public as matters of nanny-state 'red tape'."

Australian Prime Minister John Howard announced earlier this month the formation of a business-led taskforce to reduce the "red tape" in areas such as health and safety.

This was in addition to the Government's proposed industrial relations reforms, which aim to restrict union right of entry into workplaces and clamp down on industrial action.

Unions slammed the IR package as "dangerous".

"There are very real concerns that workers will face longer and irregular hours and unpaid overtime, leading to greater stress and fatigue," SA Unions secretary Janet Giles said. "This is often a factor in workplace injuries."

The Crime and Society Foundation's Criminal Obsessions report is available from http://www.crimeandsociety.org.uk/pdfs/monograph1_17Oct05.pdf

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Last modified: Tuesday, 15-Nov-2005 20:37:36 EST