A cause close to my heart this week, with a campaign from the CWU to tighten the Dangerous Dogs Act, to spare the nation’s posties from the jaws of the nation’s best friends. Up to 6,000 UK posties are attacked by dogs every year on their rounds, and many injured seriously, just so dog owners can get their junk mail and ebay purchases. Read the rest of this entry »

Prospective mayoral candidate Boris Johnson is no fan of health and safety regulations, apparently regularly declaring his hero to be Larry Vaughn, the fictional mayor in Jaws, who refused to close the beaches after expert testimony and evidence of the first shark attack, leading to another free lunch for the film’s eponymous anti-hero.

Apparently the odd gobbled bather here and there is a small price to pay for the business freedoms that come with under-regulation. The latest gaffe from London’s would be gaffer is taken from a speech he gave last year at Lloyds of London:

“The real hero of Jaws is the mayor. A gigantic fish is eating all your constituents and he decides to keep the beaches open. OK, in that instance he was actually wrong. But in principle, we need more politicians like the mayor - we are often the only obstacle against all the nonsense which is really a massive conspiracy against the taxpayer.”

Wonder how many more safety reps are going to be out canvassing for Ken now?

Hat tip - Mars Hill

Just back from Singapore and Hong Kong. Much that’s strange to report (I’d never been to Asia before), but on a union-geek tip, I found this quite amusing: two official attempts to promote good workplace health & safety.

Singapore’s government might politely be described as ‘paternalistic’, so they don’t have the hang-ups about mounting an all-out irony-free H&S campaign that we might. “Shine at Work” is run by the unions, government and NGOs, and has impressive advertising all over the place - I saw a huge conversion of a bus shelter with posters and giant cutouts.

Best of all though is the official pop song of the Shine campaign, which you can download from the site. All together now: “When you do your job, Remember safety first. Always look, think, then you do. Working safely with a smile, For colleagues and your loved ones.”

Also Hong Kong, where the Science Museum has a whole gallery devoted to H&S at work - putting it on a par with dinosaurs or space travel. You walk through a scaffold tunnel, where objects drop scarily towards your head, find out how to lift heavy objects and work at height safely, and watch a frankly odd musical animatronic show, where Prof Safe introduces his friends the hazardous substances, and how to store them safely.

Someone needs to get the museum webmaster on-message though: “You can experience the thrill of potential hits by falling objects at construction sites”.

I reckon most of our safety reps would like this in the UK - there’s certainly enough of them to get our own H&S pop tune into the download charts 

A gift-horse “unions in political correctness gone mad” story for the tabloids today. Call centre staff will now no longer be obliged to issue a greeting in Welsh when they answer the phone for Vale of Glamorgan Council. Call me a linguo-fascist, but I think the CWU have a point here – though not just the one being made in the story.

Staff are understandably trying to cut down voice strain, and for some non-native speakers, the phlegmy rasp that is their best approximation of the lilting tones of their fathers is apparently doing their vocal chords no good at all. As a keyboard jockey, my 6 months of RSI a while back were only a small glimpse at the huge problems that damaging your voice could have for people who speak for a living.

Dave Joyce, CWU H&S officer, said: “Call centre work can be very intense and target driven and workers spend a large proportion of their day on the telephone. Vale of Glamorgan council call centre staff undoubtedly have a justified case which deserves support.”

Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, the Welsh Language Society, are protesting the decision, as going against the council’s obligations. A spokesperson said (presumably in translation): “The Vale of Glamorgan council has a Welsh language scheme, which requires them to deal bilingually with any correspondence with the public.”

Except, how much help precisely is a chirpy “Bore da” going to be when a Welsh speaker wants to order a new hywellybin? Everyone likes a friendly greeting, but people don’t tend to ring the council to just say hello in passing. If the call centre staffer can’t actually deal with the whole enquiry in Welsh, isn’t it just a little bit (a rare bit even) of window dressing, and probably more likely to annoy than help?

The council’s proposed solution, to include Welsh in the normal recorded greeting people hear, would seem to make sense – Hopefully though also employing more Welsh-speaking CWU members to deal with the Welsh questions, and giving people a chance to press 1 for English, 2 for Welsh.