NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff drops the hammer…
Health and Safety changes driven by ACT party ideology, not evidence said NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi President Richard Wagstaff.
Changes to health and safety legislation proposed by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Brooke van Velden today comply with ACT party ideology, ignores the evidence, and will compound New Zealand’s dismal health and safety performance.
“It’s disappointing to see the Minister has ignored the widespread consensus on what New Zealand needs to do to improve its poor track record and instead has chosen to carve out small businesses from good health and safety practices,” Wagstaff said.
“Exempting small businesses from best practice health and safety makes no sense when we know that small business are riskier and need more support.
“The Government seems to think the biggest obstacle to our poor productivity and health and safety outcomes is too many road cones. It’s no wonder New Zealand can’t get ahead when our leaders in Government seem so out of touch, and have no credible responses to these challenges.
“Given the massive challenge we have as a country to improve our health and safety performance, it’s astounding the Minister would target the use of road cones and expect WorkSafe to focus its scarce time and energy on creating a hotline.
“The Minister has been quick to cut support for important issues like modern slavery, and sat on her hands on other important health and safety concerns, like banning engineered stone. It would seem that this Government is more concerned about road cones than either of these issues.
“What’s worse is that these changes are being justified on the basis of cutting red tape for economic growth. Good business know that proper health and safety is not a compliance cost.
“On average there is a workplace fatality every week, another 20 are killed from occupational disease, and thousands more are incapacitated by injuries. Nothing in these proposals signals an intent to improve these numbers,” said Wagstaff.
…let’s be very clear what the Minister is saying by promoting her road cone nark line, working class lives are collateral damage so angry drivers can race on the roads like lunatics.
Road cones are there to create the illusion of safety so working class men and woman can work in the baking heat under heavy clothing hoping some impatient driver doesn’t kill them.
Why should the families of working men and women fear their whanau aren’t coming home?
We already have terrible work place death rates for workers, 73 a year. Reducing the requirements for health and safety will lead to more worker deaths, but that’s an acceptable calculation from the free market right.
This is a very anti-worker Government.
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How wrong I was about this woman .I thought she was way better the the extreme Bible basher. She replaced .Turns out she is just another nasty hateful woman on a revenge crusade because Jacinda raised the minimum wage to just above the poverty line .what an piece of shit she really is .Maybe she could come and talk to the family of the young man from our village who was killed while at work .They are still devastated 4 years later .His young nephew and niece are only now grappling with his passing
I don’t understand the actual benefit here. Lets discount morality and the like for a second – are people really really turning away from buying a blouse because of to many road cones? I’m exceptionally doubtful – if you need something fast you do online delivery or click and collect. Now and get it in two hours. If you’re not doing that – the difference of a day in shipping seems like road cones isn’t going to discourage anyone.
I don’t see the actual company value for having such unrealistically low targets.
That said, I also have a friend who handled workers comp on Australia and a lot of those injuries are pretty obviously deliberate – such as people who 100% need compensation after being on the job five hours due to repeated strain injuries.
This just makes no sense.
Everyone knew when they were driving around they could see Featherbedding in the Ministry Of Works just like they know now they are observing private companies Rorting the state and councils with traffic management. Seriously it’s not uncommon to see six traffic managers per one worker driving a hedge trimmer or ditch clearance machine.
Clearly this isn’t as worthy of media attention as the Ben Doyle smear
No, of course not. Salacious stories sell at the expense of important stories. It’s up to us to spread the word, apparently.
Productivity won’t improve, especially if businesses are sold off. Why make an effort for wealthy, disinterested foreign or local owners when public interest in the business no longer exists? When we own nothing, why bother? The Herald will find this soon enough, when local control is gone.
According to You tube, profits made by those billionaires as they declared their support for tRump after the election, have all been lost and then some. Mush alone has lost over 100 billion dollars. The others, we all know who they are, have lost varying amounts, all in the billions.
People are boycotting them all.
Americans are discovering the thrill of not spending on unneeded rubbish.
The ‘consumer society’ is fighting back.
We can boycott this govt. Civil disobedience. Businesses which do not cut back on worker safety efforts, will be rewarded. Idealistic perhaps but worth a try, to save lives.
We cannot rely on this govt. to protect our citizens, they have abdicated their responsibilities.
People voting in Tamaki probably don’t work on the roads but they drive, and if they should come across a hole in the ground, unmarked by road cones, they might just drive in. A split second of indecision and their lives can be ruined too.
Worker rights and human rights in general are far from the focus for this government. They would rather focus on bogus ideological approaches like austerity, to improve outcomes. Unfortunately, their policies are driving a number of outcomes in the opposite direction. Again, further demonstration of being woefully out of their depth in government. They confuse the complexity of governing with the simplicity of running a corner dairy (apologies to all the hard working dairy owner and workers who worker hard every day – just making a point that these guys are not qualified or prepared to run the country – no wonder the downward spiral continues under the CoC).
You are correct Bob. A bunch of amateurs.
Most of us had never heard of van veldan before she burst onto the scene early last year throwing her weight around.
Winston and Seymour have experience of parliament but again, little experience in successful governing. I’ve always thought Winston was best in opposition. They have too many axes to grind, too many people to get back at, too many favours to repay and fail to grasp that we see it clearly.
As for Luxon, what is he good at? Nothing so far. He’ll be remembered as pompous and bursting with entitlement and self-aggrandizement. He’ll also be remembered as weak and unable to control the worst excesses of the other two parties.
Too many cooks spoil the broth and that’s exactly what’s happened to this lot. Three major egos vying for attention. What a shambles! The Coalition of Chaos indeed.
I’ve never been able to understand why any worker would ever vote for a right-wing political party. Ever.
Every right wing party always eventually screws over the workers. They can’t help it – it’s part of their DNA.
Kept left, voting workers (and unemployed)
Me too it is weird.
But a cleaner/caretaker at one of our big high schools voted for these morons.
It’s when some workers actually get a job and some of them think they are now a class above every body else I bet many public servants are now rueing the day that they voted tory in this country. Nurses ,doctors teachers and police would have voted for this coalition they were warned but obviously didn’t listen. Many workers of today think they are above unions and don’t remember or choose to remember that the richest countries in the world were built on the back of the workers ,piss poor wages and worse conditions
Brooke thinks workers are just bottom feeders so no one cares if they die on the job .Just like when the great wall was being built any person that died on the job was used as part of the base course .
Yes, Joy well said, and the cooks will all turn on one another come election time looking forward to it.
Yes, Joy well said, and the cooks will all turn on one another come election time looking forward to it.
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