Trades unions

In unionised organisations employers are required to provide safety representatives with such “facilities and assistance” as they need to fulfil their legal functions. Office facilities are recommended.

Trade Union Safety Representatives – volunteer worker representatives – have been so successful in assisting employers to prevent accidents that the Health and Safety Executive spent £2m last year trying to figure out how to transfer the unions’ success into non-union organisations.

According to the HSE “there is strong evidence that unionised workplaces and those with health and safety representatives are safer and healthier as a result”. As they are safer, this unrecognised work saves the employers money as well as preventing pain and suffering.

The HSE has also reported that about 80 per cent of accidents can be attributed to a failure in managerial control.

As the unions are helping employers to comply with their legal duties and save them money, an office seems a small price for such greater savings.

Nigel Bryson, Bishop Auckland.

IT must have sent shivers down the spines of readers who remember the Thatcher years when they read that Business Secretary Vince Cable had been “heckled and told: keep off our right to strike” (Echo, June 7).

I hope the article does not infuriate an already stressed out UK workforce and their trades union representatives who have felt the effects of multi-million pound cuts in the public sector.

When Mr Cable says “the case for changing strike laws is not compelling”, this could imply that this coalition Government may well be contemplating considering such legislation if industrial action was to be seen to “ratchet up”.

One hopes that the coalition uses diplomacy to resolve any possible industrial action, as legislation would be a very backward step indeed.

Councillor George R Dunning, Leader, Redcar and Cleveland council.