How Anti-Worker Policies Turned Britain into a Cancer Capital
Nobody should die at work – but the government’s refusal to remove asbestos is killing more than five thousand people a year. On International Workers' Memorial Day, we should remember them by fighting for a system that values workers more than profits.
Asbestos protection. Worker wearing protective clothing, a face mask and safety goggles. (Credit: Getty Images)
Most people don’t expect their job to kill them, but for tens of thousands of people a year, that is sadly the case, and things are only getting worse. Many workers are also surprised when they hear that the biggest killer is asbestos: in fact, more people die from asbestos exposure than from road traffic accidents.
More than twenty years after its use was banned, asbestos is still killing more than five thousand people a year, and Britain even holds the shameful record for the world’s highest rates of mesothelioma, an incurable asbestos cancer that kills most victims within a year of diagnosis.
It’s affecting a wider range of workers, too. What used to be considered a killer in construction is now seen on the death certificates of teachers, nurses, performers and more.
Our public buildings are riddled with it: with 90 percent of schools and 80 percent of hospitals containing the carcinogen. Just this week, a coroner’s report into the death of the late Alice Mahon MP found that she had died from breathing in asbestos fibres in Parliament.
There is a very simple solution: if asbestos wasn’t there, thousands of people could live longer, healthier lives. Kids in asbestos-infested schools today would be protected from a horrible, fatal illness in later life—or not so later life, as victims in their 30s now being diagnosed are finding. Unions have for decades been calling for a country-wide, phased plan for the safe removal of asbestos from public buildings, starting with the most dangerous.
A Refusal to Act
There is a cost to removing asbestos, but the cost of failing to act is greater: a human cost, a cost in healthcare, compensation, and in building degradation that will only worsen over time. What’s more, asbestos removal could be done alongside existing plans to retrofit buildings for energy efficiency, remove unsafe cladding, and upgrade ventilation systems. A scaled asbestos removal plan will also create skilled jobs and apprenticeships. Despite the undeniable logic, the government refuses to act.
Short of removal, workers rely on buildings that contain asbestos to be monitored in the meantime, to make sure the material is contained, and that the people working within its vicinity are safety trained. That requires expert regulation, and enforcement to hold employers accountable where they fail to do the right thing. This isn’t happening either, or at least not to the extent we need it to.
Fighting for Workplace Safety
Here’s the thing: the organisation we rely on to investigate unsafe work is the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), and it has suffered enormous funding cuts. With rates of occupational illness on the rise and a pandemic that exposed millions working on the frontline, you might think the HSE would be given a boost in resources, but the opposite is true.
Since 2010, the HSE has seen its budget slashed by nearly half. A new report by Prospect—the union for HSE inspectors and scientists—lays bare the consequences of years of savage cuts. The number of investigations being cancelled due to ‘inadequate resources’ is at a record high. There are far fewer inspectors, far fewer inspections, and ultimately more bad bosses let off the hook.
While asbestos remains in place, and the agency we rely on to monitor safety remains woefully underfunded, the primary protector of workers is our unions. Trade union safety representatives have the legal right to inspect, to issue notices and to be consulted on asbestos management plans. Unions must not be afraid to act industrially on the issue, either: a recent strike over asbestos by Unite’s housing workers in Merseyside succeeded in securing safer working practices.
Only by removing asbestos from all public buildings can we avoid the future risk of exposure and stop the thousands of early—and entirely preventable—deaths from this dreadful, fatal illness.
It’s time to tackle the biggest cause of work-related deaths in Britain. But We cannot rely on governments, employers or regulators alone to protect us—it is unions that will fight to make every workplace safe.