‘We also have to protect ourselves’

In the run-up to International Workers’ Memorial Day on Friday, April 28, UNITElive will be running a series of stories on the importance of health and safety in the workplace, while paying tribute to those who have been killed or injured at work.

Today in Part 1 of our series, we speak to Geoff Hayward, Unite national branch secretary of the union’s engineer surveyors’ branch.

Engineer surveyors play a vital role in keeping workers and the general public safe.

The surveyors are responsible for inspecting lifts, cranes, fork lifts, boilers and much of the large machinery found in a factory.

The surveyors whose profession was created during the industrial revolution, due to concerns that boiler explosions were not good for the financial interests of business (the lives of workers were not a fundamental consideration) are a key part of the UK’s safety system.

Last year the profession was hit by a series of tragedies with two separate fatalities and a further fatal accident in a related profession.

The deaths have shocked members, according to Hayward.

“Trying to prevent other people having accidents is our job,” he said.  “But we also have to protect ourselves.”

All three deaths were unrelated. James Merritt, 39, was killed in October 2016 after falling down a lift shaft, whilst conducting an inspection. He was employed by Zurich Engineering. In 2014 he was named Engineer Surveyor of the Year by the Bureau of Engineer Surveyors. He had a wife and two children.

In the same month there was a second fatality with the death of David Oldham, a Lift and Crane Technical Standards Engineer at Zurich Engineering. Mr Oldham also died from a fall while conducting his duties in the Oxford area.

Representatives of the branch attended both Mr Merritt’s and Mr Oldham’s funerals.

Also in October there was yet another fatality when Joaquin Fernadez, a Spanish national, who was employed as a lift examiner, was crushed to death at a new IKEA store in Reading.

Hayward stresses that despite the obvious dangers of the profession, fatalities are thankfully rare and there had not been a fatal accident before last October “for four years”.

Frustration

While his primary thoughts are with the victims’ families, he is also frustrated on behalf of his fellow workers as there have been no reports into how the injuries occurred.

“We need to know what happened as soon as possible in order to be able to take preventative action,” he explained.

The inquests are unlikely to take place until later this year and Hayward is concerned that there will be no information on these tragedies from the Health and Safety Executive “for at least two years”. Two years sounds like an extraordinarily long time but given the delays in prosecutions, this might be optimistic.

Hayward points out that engineer surveyors are “highly qualified and trained people” and they are principally lone workers.

Each company takes different measures to protect its workers. In Hayward’s case his company has issued a lone working app. Hayward registers that he is lone working and then has to regularly check in. If he doesn’t, concern is automatically escalated upwards until the police are called to his location.

International Workers’ Memorial Day is celebrated annually on Friday, April 28.

Given these recent tragedies, this year’s event will be particularly poignant for Hayward and his colleagues. On asking Hayward on what the day means to him he says, “It puts a focus on what should be there all the time on what can happen at work.”

For further information on International Workers’ Memorial Day, including a listing of events across the UK, go to Unite’s page here.