Unions lack faith in port safety body

News | HSW
01.03.2007

The T&G union is pulling out of the main ports industry health and safety forum, claiming it is too dominated by employers' interests, and at least one other union is considering following suit.

The T&G has written to transport and education ministers to tell them it is withdrawing from the tripartite Ports Industry National Committee for Health, Safety, Skills and Standards (the "National Committee") because its parent trade organisation, Ports Skills and Safety Limited (PSSL), is too heavily controlled by major ports employers such as Associated British Ports and is not fit to be the lead body for safety training and promotion in UK ports.

The union's Docks, Waterways and Fishing National Trade Group Committee decided in January not to replace the T&G's current representative on the National Committee when he retires next month.

"We are unconvinced that the company, Port Skills Safety Ltd, dominated by the major ports group, is representative enough, has the competence or the independence to act as an appropriate lead body for training, the adoption of standards and the development of a strategy for the sector," said T&G national organiser for transport Graham Stevenson in his letter to ministers. "...it is at best confusing and, at worst, deceptive that a skills standards body should assume a semi-official 'regulatory' role on safety."

PSSL was formed in 2002 to oversee standards setting, qualifications and safety guidance provision to the industry. The National Committee is the main forum to discuss safety initiatives and training and is made up of three union nominees and representatives of the HSE, Department for Transport and Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA). The committee's work with PSSL in the past includes the Safer Ports Initiative which helped cut fatal and major accidents among workers by 21% in three years.

The T&G has pressed PSSL for a seat on its board, currently made up of port employers, but claims it was asked for "major financial investment" in PSSL as a condition. The unions sat on the board of PSSL's predecessor, British Port Industry Training.

"We need to explore another way to fulfil the brief of PSSL but in a less partisan way," T&G spokesperson Andrew Dodghson said. "Saying that if we want to be on the board we have to pay for it is not the way to do things."

The union representing port officers, Nautilus (formerly NUMAST), has also voiced doubts about PSSL. "We are considering our position," Nautilus' senior national secretary Allan Grayson told HSW. "We have been equally frustrated by not having a position on the board of PSSL." He said the HSE and MCA are "grossly under-resourced" as regulators but that a limited company managed by the ports employers was not the right way to supplement their efforts.

PSSL's chief executive Peter Bond said he was "addressing the position and concerns of the trade unions with each of our partners as a matter of urgency."