A walk in the woods
A couple of years ago I did a little exploring around Lake Vyrnwy in mid-Wales. Lake Vyrnwy is a reservoir constructed in the 1880s to supply drinking water supply to Liverpool. Back then, disease contracted from unclean drinking water killed thousands of ordinary, mostly poor, people. The reservoir took just over a decade to complete.
44 of the labourers who worked on the project were killed. They are remembered by a simple obelisk hidden on a hillside near the dam. The monument’s location contrasts starkly with that of another commemorative plaque on the dam itself. This lists the men who commissioned the project, not those who died. The Liverpool Corporation paid for the ‘official’ memorial to celebrate the engineering feat. 44 human lives was considered to be a price worth paying, whereas a monument to mark the loss of life had to be funded by the workmates of the dead.
Today, sacrifice on this scale is unacceptable. Death in the construction industry is entirely preventable. The building of the London Olympics stadia was heralded as one of the safest large-scale civil engineering works ever completed. The man in charge was Lawrence Waterman OBE CFIOSH, Head of Health & Safety for the London Olympic Delivery Authority. His ‘no excuses’ approach to the protection of workers ensured that the only sacrifices made at London 2012 were of the sporting kind. It was the safest Olympic build ever. Not a single life was lost.
Compare this to the horrific number of casualties already associated with the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar. Exact numbers are difficult to establish. However, the embassies of India and Nepal have confirmed that around 1,200 people have died since construction began. These two nations contribute around two-thirds of the total migrant workforce. The final death count may pass 4,000. If there were to be a minute’s silence for each life lost, it would last for almost the entire duration of the opening group stage of the competition.
We have an uneasy relationship with workplace safety in the UK. Press headlines slamming ‘health & safety gone mad’ are not uncommon. Legislation is seen a nuisance, rather than a force for good. Many bizarre tabloid stories are little more than a myth. Highlighted cases, such as reports of office staff being banned from putting up Christmas decorations, are often merely a result of corporate ignorance, laziness or a refusal to pay for adequate insurance.
Politicians could do more to help with myth-busting, yet depressingly loud calls to ‘cut red tape’ are a familiar trope, particularly from those on the right. A Conservative manifesto commitment in 2017 spoke of a ‘one in, two out’ approach to new regulations – an idea stolen from Donald Trump who issued an executive order in the US calling for deregulation along identical lines. In America, on average, 14 workers die at work every single day.
The standard of protection given to UK workers, via the 1974 Health & Safety at Work Act and the comprehensive range of European directives should be celebrated. When a proportionate and responsible approach is adopted, the results are impressive. Lawrence Waterman’s achievement at London 2012 stands testimony to this. The UK suffers less than half the fatalities of our European neighbours (0.51 per 100,000 employees vs 1.29 per 100,000 employees). I am thankful that I live and work in a country with a strong track record in workplace safety.
Workers Memorial Day is celebrated worldwide on 28th April each year. The day is marked with demonstrations, events and vigils that aim to ‘remember the dead: protect the living’. That’s a pretty good mantra and something that every nation should aspire to achieve.
Those who scoff at the Health and Safety at Work Act and its continuing legacy should put their cynicism to one side and consider that since its inception, fatal injuries have reduced by an impressive 85%. The only category of work-related deaths still on the rise are those attributed to Mesothelioma; a hangover from the asbestos-filled workplaces in which previous generations spent their lives with little protection. In those less-enlightened times, I can imagine how the popular press and its readers would have scoffed at the thought of workers being ‘inconvenienced’ by compulsory face masks.
Would these people have felt so strongly about the inconvenience of workplace safety, had they been compelled to chisel the names of 44 workers onto an obelisk in a shady wood at the top of a hill?
If this article has whetted your appetite for more information on Lake Vyrnwy, or facts about global workplace safety, the following links are worth checking out:
UK health and safety in numbers
EU health and safety in numbers
US health and safety in numbers
London 2012 - the safest Olympic build on record
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