BACK TO HOME
PAGE BACK TO HOME
PAGE EUROPEAN REVIEW
| Graham Petersen is a member of the Hazards campaign and course co-ordinator at the Industrial Relations Unit at South Thames College. He recently attended the 9th. European Work Hazards conference in Denmark. Here he draws on a report by John Bamford to describe the event. |
|
|||||
The conference was held under the auspices of the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) and held in their residential education centre in Helsingør (Elsinore), about 40 kilometres north of Copenhagen.There were 225 delegates, mainly from Europe, including 33 from the UK. In addition Central America sent 5, Cuba 1 and the USA 3. The main organisers were activists from the Danish network AAA, which brings together unions, workers and academics to research, inform and campaign on workplace health & safety (just like our own Hazards Campaign). Once again England and Scotland delegates were active and prominent in the conference, providing a number of workshop facilitators and speakers.
The facilities at the LO School were impressive and of an extremely high standard in all respects. The workshop and plenary rooms were custom-built, with lots of smaller rooms and other places for small-group working; there were computers all over the building, and a free-access Internet room. The residential accommodation was of a superb standard; the site is compact but spacious being in extensive grounds overlooking the Øresund, the 4 kilometre wide strip of water that separates Denmark from Sweden. The bedrooms were clean, comfortable and with plenty of space; there is a 24-hour coffee/tea fountain, and abundant informal lounges and areas for delegates to relax and meet, indoors and out. All the school's staff were helpful, friendly and very efficient, and nothing was too much trouble. There was a free bicycle loan facility, and a range of other leisure and relaxation activities available. The general view of the UK delegation members was that this was probably the best location in Europe for a conference.
The first formal conference activity on the Friday morning was the workplace visits. Delegates had selected from a dozen of these, from the Carlsberg Brewery to a sewage effluent plant, (both ends of the beer drinking cycle) and included the airport, a building site, a number of electronics and engineering factories, a print works, a theatre, a Copenhagen bus depot, and a pig factory. The visits were organised so that delegates knew what particular aspects of work hazards they were going to see, (manual handling at the airport, for example) which helped us to select a visit. We saw the work process, and met workers and their union representatives for discussion and questions about what we had seen, and how the union was organised and had tackled problems. We were then given lunch by the unions, and the opportunity to continue discussions over the traditional beer and sandwiches.
Back at the centre the opening plenary was addressed by Asbjorn Wahl from Norway who addressed the increasing brutalisation of work and will return to this theme at the Hazards 2004 conference in Manchester in July. There was also a speaker from the Danish Union for Women Workers. Saturday was essentially a workshop day, with a 3-hour session in the morning, and a 2-hour session in the afternoon, followed by further information meetings in the late afternoon, and the opportunity to have another national meeting.
Sunday began with a final workshop, during which the groups made suggestions for amendments and additions to the European Charter, followed by the final plenary, where there was a review of the suggestions for the Charter from the workshops. As always, much of the social and informal interaction between delegates has proved to be very fruitful, and already there are suggestions that some bilateral meetings and activities around specific issues would be useful. For example, in the past the Danes could never understand the problems that the UK was having with sub-contractors and out-sourcing, but they are now facing exactly these management techniques themselves, and want more information about possible strategies for dealing with them.
Other ideas included the re-establishment or revitalisation of more informal information-exchange networks around specific problems, such as stress, and chemical and control standards across Europe. Suzanne Binzer from Denmark, who organises the Labsafetyeurope and work-hazards web sites, announced that some funding has become available to develop this and to make it more available for use by workers and their representatives from November this year. As always the conference has contributed to a greater understanding between activists from the different countries involved, and a wider perspective on the state of health, safety & welfare Europe-wide..
THE SUCCESS OF THE CURRENT Europass scheme (see
issue 19 page 10), now used
by over 50,000 trainees, has encouraged the European Commission to
expand its scope. They have adopted a proposal for a new document
that will focus on life-long learning and include personal and
vocational skills (the European CV), language skills (European
Language Portfolio), vocational qualifications (Certificate
Supplement) and higher education diplomas (Diploma Supplement). The
former Europass for young people who undertake vocational training in
a foreign Member State is to be renamed MobiliPass and will form a
part of the new Europass.
The proposal is for the document to be open-ended so that extra
elements can be added if, for instance, a specific skill needs to be
taught over the EU as a whole. It is expected that the pass will be
held electronically (the European CV has already been downloaded
500,000 times from the CEDEFOP web site). Commented Education
Commissioner Reding, 'With the European Union poised to expand from
15 to 25 Member States, ... improving the transparency of
qualifications and competences is essential in order to increase and
improve transnational mobility and make lifelong education and
training a reality'.
|
Back to |
Forward to |
Up to |
