Legionnaires outbreak linked to cutbacks

No Cuts! Full Stop! reproduces this article from today's Scottish Sunday Herald 10/06/012 linking the Legionnaires outbreak in Edinburgh to cutbacks...

Revealed: the cutbacks to Legionnaires' watchdogs

EXCLUSIVE BY ROB EDWARDS

THE outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in Edinburgh has come against a backdrop of severe cuts in the number of health inspectors and safety checks meant to prevent the life-threatening bug from spreading.

Experts are warning that cutbacks in the number of health and safety inspectors and the amount of inspections could have allowed the outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in Edinburgh to happen and may cause future outbreaks elsewhere in Scotland.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that City of Edinburgh Council has cut its environmental health officers by 18% in the last three years – double the country's average cut of 9%. The number of officials responsible for protecting public health in the city has dropped from 61 in 2009 to 50 in 2011.

The UK Government's Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has also suffered serious cuts. Its UK field operations division, which is responsible for inspections, has lost 18% of its staff – more than 250 jobs – between 2007 and 2011.

According to the trade union, Prospect, which represents HSE inspectors, the number of preventative workplace inspections was slashed by a third last year on the instructions of UK ministers, from 30,000 to 20,000 a year.

The cuts were described as "staggering, shocking and savage" by Professor Andrew Watterson, head of the occupational and environment research group at Stirling University.

He said: "The crippling impact of cuts in staff numbers and resources is now threatening public health.

"The Legionnaires' disease outbreak has happened against a backdrop of serious and continuing UK cuts, loss of staff and expertise and significant demoralisation in two crucial bodies involved – the HSE and environmental health services. These cuts must raise serious doubts about the capacity of such bodies to deal with similar future threats to public health."

A whole raft of businesses had been recategorised as "low risk" to enable the number of inspections to be reduced, Watterson argued. "The Legionnaires' outbreak should be a wake-up call because so-called 'low-risk' premises such as offices and large shopping premises have cooling towers that require continuing regular inspection as well as proper maintenance if public health is to be protected."

It was hard to imagine how the HSE could effectively enforce the regulations meant to control the risk of legionella with an ever-shrinking group of staff, he added. "Saving money by cuts in personnel and resources could cost lives in the future."

Prospect also said that the Legionnaires' outbreak highlighted the risks of cutting back on proactive inspections.

Simon Hester, chairman of the union's HSE branch, said: "It is a stark reminder of the danger of denigrating health and safety at work and the value of effective inspection by the HSE.

"Due to spending cuts, HSE's occupational health expertise is extremely thinly spread, which has led to a lack of sufficient advice in the field. It is always preferable to avoid incidents that harm people, rather than merely investigating after the event."

Hester added: "Prospect believes that decisions on proactive inspection should be based on professional expertise and that adequate resources are made available. HSE needs more inspectors, not less." The cuts to Edinburgh's environmental health officers were disclosed to the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland, a professional body, in response to a freedom of information request.

Across all of Scotland's 32 local authorities, the number of such officers has dropped from 556 in March 2009 to 506 in September 2011.

The institute's chief executive, Tom Bell, who previously worked as an environmental health officer for Edinburgh City Council, said the council had lost some very experienced staff. Bell said that common sense would suggest there is "some kind of relationship" between cutbacks and the Legionnaires' outbreak.

He said: "Most people would feel that if you reduce the resource, there is the potential for problems to develop and not be remedied or identified, and operators not required to address them." The number of Edinburgh council departments had also been reduced from about 16 to four, he said.

"You're now a very small part of a very large department, so your voice is very hard to hear. It does make the job more difficult when it comes to arguing for resources."

Bell was worried about the "soft touch" regulatory agenda being promoted by the UK Government. "Inspections should be related to the actual risk, and not be about helping businesses," he said.

Edinburgh City Council denied that staff numbers had an impact on inspections, as there was only one site with cooling towers that it was responsible for in the city.

A council spokesman said: "Responsibility for enforcement falls to either local authorities or the HSE, depending on the premises or work activity. Premises within the council's enforcement remit are inspected in accordance with an ongoing inspection programme.

"Work is ongoing to identify the source of the [Legionnaires'] outbreak."

The HSE insisted that the number of inspectors in Scotland has remained stable since 2008, though there had been a drop from 184 in 2010 to 174 in 2012.

A spokeswoman said: "HSE has maintained the broad number of inspectors and other staff based in Scotland over the last five years. It is wrong to claim that numbers have been significantly reduced."

NCFS! INTERVIEWS VICTIM OF WORKFARE

No Cuts-Full Stop! Interviewed a supporter of the recent Occupy Dundee camp. Discussions there have shown that people are very well aware of the injustice of workfare. The NCFS! Blog thanks the person who gave an interview and respects his wish to be anonymous for fear of trouble from the welfare authorities.

Q- How long have you been unemployed - on the buroo?

A- I've been signing on since the 1980's. For years I was on Incapacity Benefit but two years ago they threatened to cut that benefit. I was switched over to JSA - Job Seekers Allowance.

Q- How did workfare come to be put to you?

A- I went into the Wellgate Buroo about six months ago and told to accept workfare or face a loss of benefits,

     including Housing Benefit.

Q- What does it involve?

A- I'm in Tescos packing shelves and menial work like sweeping for £55 a week, doing 38 hours.

Q- Any other folk on the scheme?

A- No other people. I'm feeling a wee bit isolated!

Q- What is your view of workfare?

A- Workfare is not for the working class people of Dundee.

WORKFARE - PROTEST AND RESISTANCE.

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Supporters joined the Boycott Workfare boycottworkfare.org Day of Action protests against Workfare on Saturday 3 March. Shops and outlets like Primark, Tescos and PoundLand were targeted, picketed and occupied. From Dundee to Liverpool, demonstrators united to expose and oppose the exploitation of those compelled to work for benefits.

Since the well publicised protests of the Right to Work campaign, the issue of Workfare has brought the conditions under which the millions of unemployed are expected to suffer, to a wider audience. Posh media presenters have had to, briefly and uncomfortably, acquaint themselves with the stresses and details of the forgotten and marginalised poor. As the crisis deepens and its effects widen, more and more youth - 1 million unemployed at present - and jobless are experiencing the compulsory demand that work is accepted at benefit rates - Job Seekers Allowance of £67.50 per week for adults, £53.45 for under - 25's. Boycott Workfare estimate that there are over 250,000 people on Workfare programmes who are compelled to take jobs at these rates or face the suspension of benefits.

After the First World War, in 1919, the unemployed facing the same compulsions, marched under the banner of “1914- Fight!, 1919- Starve!”  These minimum benefits are the means today by which millions of people subsist, to remove them means that poverty, hunger and cold become a savage reality for the working class here. While bankers, business and parliamentary politicians rake it in, the working class is forced to sell its labour power at the lowest rates. On this basis a capitalist economy can be rebuilt but the working class will pay - and lose! The fight against Workfare is part of the battle against the cuts. We refuse to pay for the debts of the wealthy and powerful. The people of Greece are further down that road than we are, wage cuts and unemployment as well as assuaging finance capital's 'debts', are designed to drive down the wages of the working class across Europe by at least a third - more if possible. The battle against workfare is part of the battle against capitalist exploitation. http://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/index.php/international/2425-greek-workers-fight-back

No Cuts. Full Stop! would like to make two very necessary points about the general campaign against Workfare which we believe would bring political and social strength to our battles.

This struggle cannot be reduced to the deliberately false characterisation of Workfare as an exclusively Tory bogeyman. This argument is produced to spook us into accepting Labour party concerns about the shabby scheme as genuine and evidence of the possibility of a Labour led campaign against the Tories. This is a fabrication. Anyone on workfare in the last 2 years will know vividly that the Labour government before the election of May 2010 was the enthusiastic architect of workfare, using its previous 13 years in office to begin and develop the compulsory system. The Right to Work Campaign which made headlines occupying stores on Oxford Street in London, continues this corrupt cover - up for Labour with it's recent arguments to include of Labour councillors who had voted for cuts budgets on 'anti- cuts' platforms. 

While tax dodging multi - nationals like Tescos, MacDonalds and Primark have undoubtedly exploited the labour of the unemployed here, we would argue that these money - making outfits are all well used to making blood soaked profits from slave labour. The goods which these firms peddle have their origins in the poor peoples and countries of this world. Imperialism is the means by which the labour of children, women and men is brutally super - exploited. 14 - hour days in pesticide soaked fields in Africa, in the sweat of the cotton looms of Bangladesh, in the back street smelters of Thailand – there is slave labour of the most brutal kind. Unity with the fight and resistance of the working class here and there - common cause against the common exploiters - is the way forward.

Michael MacGregor

Glasgow marchers remember John MacLean

On the morning of the 27th November 2011 several hundred supporters assembled to commemorate the 88th anniversary of the venerable Marxist educator John MacLean. Memorial tributes were laid at the grave [including a wreath from the R.C.G.] and the graveside oration was respectfully delivered by Gerry Cairns from the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement. The marchers then solemnly gathered across from the Old Eastwood Cemetery as the parade set off on the designated route along Thornliebank Road galvanised and buoyed by the bold Republican anthems which rang out, courtesy of Eirigi and the Irish Republican Socialist Party.  

As the march eventually wound its way into Shawbridge Street there was air of cohesion and purpose perhaps rekindled by the memory of the 40,000 Glaswegians who lined the streets of the city on the day of John MacLeans funeral in 1923 to pay their respects to a real working class hero. Sadly however, less than 100years on and the only “welcoming committee” in evidence were the sneering, braying irreformable Afrikaners of the orange lodge who spilled out onto the street in a feeble attempt to harangue the marchers. Three of these despicable miscreants were later detained at the assembly point in Pollokshaws arcade as the last of the marchers departed for the Republican rally at the Shawbridge Tavern. Comrade Joey Simons [F.R.F.I] delivered a timely reminder in his address to the rally stating that “We enter 2011 with great optimism and renewed confidence that the political culture in which we exist is changing. In 2010 we witnessed the contradictions of imperialism intensify; the economic crisis is spreading to the heartlands of Europe and is giving rise to new social forces……”  

“This gives us hope. We enter the New Year conscious of our responsibilities to fight for the creation of an anti imperialist organisation capable of defending the interests of the oppressed. In Glasgow that means organising the unorganised, it means making socialism central to building the new   movement and opposing those forces determined to divert the struggle into respectable dead ends. We refuse to be still.” Touche comrade….Joeys address received a rapturous endorsement from the assembled throng and in a rousing finale he declared that “We hope to join with the comrades gathered here today for the momentous period ahead. We join in the call for the Scottish Workers Republic, but know that of most importance is not the proclamation but the commitment to raise that call from abstraction into the living world – today, that means standing whole heartedly on the side of the working class, on the side of socialism, on the side of revolution – on the side of John MacLean”.