Jostling for power

As usual, the recent unity between various trade unions has proved both fleeting and illusory. After coming together for a few weeks to protest the non-implementation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), the Federation of Independent Trade Unions and Non-Governmental Organisations (FITUN) and the National Trade Union Centre (NATUC) are now at each other’s throats. Now that the Government has brought a revamped Act to Parliament, FITUN is claiming that NATUC has sold out the workers and that the new OSHA is not in workers’ best interests.

But FITUN has not backed up this assertion with specifics. The organisation asserts that the proposed amendments “significantly weaken a worker’s right to refuse to work under hazardous and life-threatening conditions.” However, exactly what amendments do this were not listed by FITUN’s spokesmen. Section 15 of the Act has two changes which bear on this issue. It could be argued that these amendments limit a worker’s legal right to refuse to work. But it could also be argued that the amendments remove legal cover from trade unionists who wish to take a certain kind of industrial action against their employer.

If this is the only ground for FITUN’s criticism, then it would appear that their real concern is not the workers, but political mileage. In order to prove otherwise, the FITUN leaders must build a stronger case against what, initially, was certainly a shoddy piece of legislation. Indeed, now that Labour Minister Danny Montano has presented the amended Act, it is clear why the legislation could not go forward. At the same time, the Government must take full responsibility for letting the Act rest in limbo for two years, until a spate of industrial accidents brought the matter to public attention.

All parliamentarians, however, should be embarrassed that they let such a deficient piece of work be put into law. Among the list of amendments brought by Mr Montano to the Lower House on January 23, there were eight which had solely to do with typographical errors. In an age of computerised spell — and grammar-checks, this bespeaks a certain laxity which is not acceptable in the nation’s highest law-making body. There were also many legal fine points which had to be clarified. Certain sections had to be reworded to be brought in line with existing laws, such as the Children’s (Amendment) Act 2000 and the Offences Against the Persons Act. Other amendments had to do with practical considerations. In the original Act, for example, emergency health care facilities had been limited to a specific number and created a connection to the risk assessment in determining whether such facilities were required. This was onerous and so was changed.

Another amendment provides legal recourse to inspectors who are threatened while carrying out their duties. It was, however, the obvious omissions in the original Act which were most revealing. There was no requirement for the employer to do an annual risk assessment within a specified time-frame — surely a basic clause of any safety legislation. There was no specification for an appeal process by the person who had been served a prohibition notice. The offences specified by the Act did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Industrial Court.

These are just some of the deficiencies which have now been fixed. But there may be more clauses, old and new, which also need to be revamped. It is curious, for example, that the new Act reduces the time-frame for the inspector’s report from 72 to 24 hours. This hardly appears realistic, and the trade unions might legitimately ask questions about such changes. That they have not done so, however, suggests that the OSHA is only their secondary agenda, and their main one continues to be jostling for power.