The Circus, by Georges Seurat
As Catholics, we defer to no-one in our devotion to heroic and selfless sacrifice. Christ’s willing entry into his Passion is, for us, the ultimate act of self-giving in love. Through the ages those the Church recognises as saints and martyrs have attempted to emulate his example in practical terms. Take Saint Damian of Molokai, who died aged just 49, after more than two decades of missionary service in the Hawaiian leper colony, where he embraced the infected and even tended to their open sores, before himself finally contracting the fatal disease. (I’m not sure what if any advice he was offered on health and safety, but as a saint he took responsibility for his own risk!)
So like those of other faiths and none, we are lost in admiration at the selfless heroism of medical professionals, care workers, priests ministering to the sick, who knowingly put themselves in harms’ way to serve the needs of those who had contracted COVID-19. We also owe a massive debt of gratitude to the other key frontline workers who kept essential services running – the bus drivers, cleaners, supermarket workers and many others, some of whom lost their lives as a result of being exposed to the virus.
But whilst we are right to recognise this enormous dedication in the face of adversity, we also should remember that there is absolutely no virtue in expecting people to work in unsafe conditions, especially where indifferent employers have failed to take all reasonable steps to mitigate risk. This is even more true when the alternative is a derisory rate of Statutory Sick Pay, insufficient to feed your family.
Dignity at work and the rights of the worker are at the heart of Catholic Social Teaching, which stands in total contradiction to the culture of profit-driven indifference to the lives of ordinary people in their places of work. Yet deaths from workplace accidents or diseases remain staggeringly high on a global scale, with the International Labor Organisation citing an average of more than 2.78m per year.
Despite this, “’elf and safety” had become something of a joke to the popular press. All too often it figured in the tabloids as the first resort of the killjoy or the jobsworth. Along with the annual anti-PC “Christmas is cancelled and replaced by Winterval” myths, are the stories about festive tinsel being deemed a fire hazard, or snowballs being deemed as potentially lethal weapons.
Such scepticism was enthusiastically encouraged by business interests, for whom regulation just meant costly and burdensome “red tape”. But if the “cost” of compliance was experienced by shareholders in terms of squeezed margins, the workers were left to bear the cost of failure, sometimes paying the ultimate price.
Most often fatalities at work occur amongst manual workers in sectors like construction and industrial manufacturing – with common causes including falls, accidents with machinery, being crushed under heavy equipment, or being struck by a moving vehicle. Behind the statistics, every one of these instances is a personal tragedy, often leaving behind grief-stricken loved ones, and families struggling to cope.
The arrival of COVID-19 saw the balance or risk shift in terms of the nature of work-related illnesses and fatalities, with the health and social care sectors particularly hard hit. But even office workers in high-density working environments were concerned over their health and safety, as were workers in public transport, or in shops and supermarkets.
A worldwide pandemic of this scale and severity would inevitably have taxed any regulatory regime. Yet even prior to COVID-19, the capacity of the HSE to undertake regular workplace inspections had impacted upon by the devastating austerity-driven cuts to its budget. Since 2010 this has amounted to a cut of over 50% in real terms according to the Prospect trade union, leading to significant reductions in staffing levels and the numbers of inspectors in particular.
When the Coronavirus pandemic began to hit, workers concerned about their employers’ apparent failure to adhere to the necessary guidelines were told to contact the HSE. But by July 2 it was confirmed to Hazards magazine that “there has been no instance of a factory closing following an outbreak because of action by the HSE”. Worst still, the HSE is also the enforcement body responsible for monitoring the health and social care sector, yet they explicitly ruled out any unannounced proactive inspections. This, despite the soaring rate of cases in care homes, and widespread complaints of insufficient or inadequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
The £14m increase in HSE funding announced by Boris Johnson is a drop in the ocean, replacing less than a tenth of the funding which has been cut since 2010. And as important as the funding issue is, what is needed just as much is a cultural shift in the importance we place on maintaining good regulations (amid the danger of a “race to the bottom” following a no-deal Brexit), regular inspection and effective enforcement.
Let no-one be in any doubt that the post-COVID political landscape will inevitable mean taking health and safety concerns seriously. The demands for a properly funded and effective regulator must be accompanied by the strengthening of trade union rights, so that workers can exercise solidarity and ensure that their rights are respected. Yet already, ahead of the planned reopening of schools in September, the tabloid press represents teachers and parents raising concerns as workshy malingerers or far left saboteurs of economic recovery. What they really mean is that the pursuit of the public good might compromise profit maximisation.
But Pope Francis reflected in his homily at mass on Easter Monday, in the wake of the pandemic Catholics and all those of goodwill are called to “choose the good of the people. And never fall into the tomb of the god of money.”
Dr Michael Calderbank co-founded Solidarity Consulting, which works in Parliament for trade unions and third sector organisations.