Cutting workers' rights won't improve health and safety

The Health and Safety Taskforce announced today is an important step in making our workplaces safer, but the government’s determination to weaken workers’ rights could totally undermine its work, says Labour’s spokesperson for Labour Issues, Darien Fenton.

“Labour proposed a Commission of Inquiry into Health and Safety as part of its policies going into the 2011 election, so we are pleased the government agrees that the current system needs a comprehensive review.

“We argued then that the tragedy that is New Zealand's high workplace death and injury toll should be given the same ‘status’ as that given to the road toll.

“That would mean examining every aspect of our health and safety system, including the possibility of moving from self-regulation to a standards-based system,” Darien Fenton said.

“Unfortunately, the government doesn’t appear to understand that a healthy and safe workplace goes hand in hand with good workplace cultures, effective worker participation and respect for the fundamental rights of workers.

“Allowing a worker to be sacked without reason within their first 90 days of employment means, along with restrictions on access for unions, that even where there are health and safety concerns it can be unsafe for workers to raise those issues with their employer.

“The government’s plans to seriously weaken collective bargaining rights will have a further detrimental impact, as unions play a very important role in promoting health and safety through collective bargaining agreements, and encouraging worker participation.

“The introduction of workplace experience ratings in ACC - another backward step – will also discourage accident reporting.

“We need to ensure that workers and employers are able to be open and honest about workplace safety.

“While it is pleasing that the government accepts that our workplace death and injury rates are unacceptable, it needs to get real about other changes it is making which will undermine the work it is doing to addressing this critical problem,” said Darien Fenton.