Economic Waste
On 1st April. the new Health and Safety at Work Act came into force. It had previously received paid publicity in the press along the lines that it represented:
A great new chance to make work a lot safer and healthier in Britain.(Daily Mirror, 24th March 75)
The announcements heralding its approach quoted the following passage from the Robens report of the Committee of Health and Safety at Work:
The toll of death, injury, suffering and economic waste from accidents at work and occupational diseases remains unacceptably high!
Although it would be impossible to measure suffering, the hard facts are measurable and give some insight into the reasons for the Act:
Every year nearly 1,000 people are killed by accidents at work—between 3 and 4 every working day. Well over 500,000 are injured badly enough to be off work for more than 3 days. Some 250,000 are presently getting disability benefit; some 30,000 wives have been made widows by accidents at work. This means much suffering for the individual and a heavy cost to the community.
The suffering of a particular individual who has been injured through working in unsafe conditions is of the least importance to the capitalists. Where it begins to hurt them is when this “heavy cost to the community” has to be borne: that is, through taxation from the capitalist class as a whole. It is they who ultimately pay disability benefit, or the costs of medical treatment through the Health Service, or allowances to widows whose husbands have been killed. It follows that it is directly to their benefit that such expenses be reduced to a minimum.
The Act has increased the responsibility on the employer by threatening all those who fail to maintain a safe plant, give adequate training and supervision, or ensure that his workers are aware of the safety policy, that the Government can levy heavy fines and penalties. This is only to be expected. Those capitalists who do increase conditions of safety will expect some guarantee that all of them have joined in the drive. It would naturally cause some pique if one private-property owner made his plant safe in order to obtain some eventual relief from taxation, only to find that his competitor was still cutting all the corners and still placing his workers in jeopardy. The consequent cost of any accidents would have to be met by both of them.
The announcement also describes how workers (including self-employed workers) can play a part. They
must take care to avoid injuring themselves or others at work.
It is clear that any sensible worker will take care to avoid injuring himself, but however careful he may be, when placed in a position where physical dangers exist as well as being under constant pressure to maintain or increase his output, accidents will occur. Nor will they disappear even if all capitalists comply with the code of practice set out in the Act. It is not possible to remove the occasional lapse of attention with legislation while men are unceasingly harried at work in which they have no interest.
No Deal — Yet
The Government adopted an interesting position on the request from the Libyan Government to supply up to £1,000m. worth of tanks, guns, fighter aircraft submarines etc. They considered the request and decided that they probably could not accede to the major part of the order. They took this decision after some consideration—armaments after all are commodities and capitalist production operates to produce and sell commodities. The Labour Party cannot be concerned with the fact that such commodities can only be used for destructive purposes. They are however interested in who is buying them, especially in view of the fact that arms previously sold to Libya have mysteriously "found their way” to the IRA. However they are not all united on the issue. Mr. William Wilson, Labour MP for Coventry South East, spoke of his Party’s decision thus:
It is a deplorable situation. The orders will almost certainly now go to France.(Financial Times, 12th April 1975)
The Government considered the Libyan request within the context of their policy for selling arms to the Middle East. This policy was outlined by Mr. David Ennals as Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office last year:
Our over-riding objective in the Middle East is a just and lasting settlement of the dispute between the Arabs and Israel. We are willing to consider requests from Middle East countries for arms, the supply of which in our view would not endanger the achievement of such a solution, in the light of our judgement of the long term policies of the State in question.
If that smacks a little of expediency, Sir Lester Suffield made it plainer:
We don’t do anything that can escalate fighting on one side or the other.(Financial Times, 12th April 1975)
And he is in an authoritative position to speak. His post is that of Head of defence sales in the Ministry of Defence. We can only assume here that those sales of armaments which he does arrange are only to countries who give a most sincere promise never to use them.
Meaning Prestige
Some tantalizing prospects were held before us in an advertisement appearing in The Sun of 3rd April. In bold type it addressed itself to “MEN! GIRLS!” (perhaps ‘women’ is now considered unflattering).
You can earn £100 p.w. Plus an exciting life and a secure future.
The mind boggles — how?
How? Get into the fabulous Computer Industry now . . . Thanks to our method people from all walks of life have exchanged boring, underpaid, insecure jobs for careers that have meaning prestige and security.
Those reading the rest of the advertisement found that it was not actually offering the above delights, but was offering to train applicants in the techniques of such “exciting” work as programming, operating and key-punching cards for computers. The delights presumably would come later, after you had paid for the course. And how would you pay? Why, how else but with all those savings accrued from the under-paid job you were leaving? Nor is this a small sum, with courses often costing over £200.
Putting aside the Computer Digest verdict in March that such training schools were "a waste of time and money”, all those still interested in the "exciting life” might note the fact that Mr. Dick Brandon (a "computer wizard” according to The Sunday Times of 13th April) is running a business which assists companies in up-dating their computers—a process referred to as "system transformation”. It is no small affair:
When we realized US computer users spend $3000m a year on conversion, we began to lick our lips.
He has now set up shop in Britain where he hopes to establish a conversion centre for Europe "with work pouring in from far and wide”. The relevance of conversion to all those would-be programmers, operators and key punchers?
The task of converting all the programmes takes months, is tediously boring and is quite likely to drive all your carefully trained, expensively hired and scarce personnel off to more stimulating pastures.
The stimulating pastures of The Sun’s advertisement columns no doubt.
Alan D'Arcy
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