Securing UK Workplace Health and Safety Protections After Brexit: A Comprehensive Readjustment to Ensure Compliance with International Norms

据最准确的估计，每天约有140人死于工伤或直接因工作而感染的疾病。也就是每年5万人。数以百万计的人患有与工作有关的身心伤害和疾病，而许多人尚未意识到他们在工作中接触了破坏性物质，因此会出现使人衰弱的症状。该项目将阐明英国在离开欧盟后如何遵守适用于工作场所健康和安全的国际法。它通过提出以下研究问题来做到这一点：英国脱欧后的职业安全和健康监管（包括工作时间管理）如何最好地解决英国高水平的工伤、疾病和死亡问题？脱欧后的职业安全和健康监管如何促进英国企业的竞争力和效率？与此同时，我们如何才能阻止肆无忌惮的雇主将不适当的职业安全与健康政策的受害者转嫁给福利体系、NHS和纳税人，并逃避他们失败的真正财务后果？英国脱欧后的职业安全和健康监管如何才能停止和扭转长期以来被误导的工作场所保护“逐底竞争”，这种竞争是由被误导的雇主游说并由他们在政府中的代表提供的，目的是追求短期利润？该项目旨在探索如何通过批准国际劳工组织职业安全与健康和工作时间公约的计划，以及通过修改英国与欧洲委员会欧洲社会宪章的关系，有效地“巩固”现有和拟议的保护措施，以便未来的政府无法轻易破坏或撤销这些保护措施。长期以来，人们一直理解和接受，职业安全与卫生保护方面的支出是一项投资，它不仅可以减轻无法计算的人力成本，而且从长远来看，可以获得许多倍的回报；它使雇主和国家以及工人受益。然而，那些在英国脱欧之后试图将英国变成欧洲“离岸血汗工厂”的人宣扬这样一种观点，即职业安全与卫生保护是“繁文缛节”，会扼杀生产力和盈利能力。他们故意将过于谨慎的企业和公共当局的荒谬行为与职业健康和安全措施混为一谈——他们非常成功地将“健康和安全疯了”的神话植入了国民意识。然而，职业安全与卫生是一个非常严肃的问题，实际上是一个生死攸关的问题。它是关于阻止雇主用有毒气体毒害他们的员工；关于停止公路运输公司强迫他们的司机每天工作15小时或每周工作82小时（许多公司仍然明目张胆地这样做）；关于防止工人从高处坠落、被机器碾压或被移动的车辆撞击的简单措施和程序。它是关于监测工人，以评估他们的健康是否受到有毒物质、工作场所要求引起的肌肉骨骼疾病或工作引起的压力的损害。它是关于向工人支付足够的病假工资，这样他们就可以承担生病不上班的费用。它是通过有效的检查、警告、起诉和施加劝阻性处罚制度，以及通过咨询和教育，确保采取适当的预防措施。职业安全与卫生最强调的不是阻止人们喝热咖啡，以防他们烫伤自己或任何无数荒谬的所谓的“健康和安全”故事经常出现在媒体上。这也不是为了创造一个“保姆国家”或迎合“雪花”。它是关于阻止雇主杀害和致残他们的工人，并模仿职业安全与卫生标准的生产力水平，并与最成功的经济体，如德国和斯堪的纳维亚国家。这就是这个团契的目的。

By the best estimates around 140 people die day every day as result of injuries sustained at work or as a result of illnesses contracted as a direct result of work. That is 50,000 people a year. Millions live with work related injuries and illnesses both mental and physical while many, as yet unaware that they have been exposed to damaging substances at work, will develop debilitating symptoms as a result.The project will set out how the UK can comply with international law as it applies to health and safety at work after we leave the EU. It does so by asking the following research questions:How can post-Brexit occupational safety and health regulation (including the management of working time) best address the high levels of work related injury, illness and death in the UK?How can post-Brexit occupational safety and health regulation promote competitiveness and efficiency in UK businesses? At the same time how can we stop unscrupulous employers from burdening the benefits system, NHS and taxpayers with the victims of their inadequate OSH policies and evading the real financial repercussions of their failures? How can post-Brexit occupational safety and health regulation halt and reverse what has long been a misguided workplace protection 'race to the bottom' in pursuit of short-term profit lobbied for by misguided employers and delivered by their representatives in government?The project seeks to explore how existing and proposed protections can effectively be 'entrenched' by a programme of ratification of International Labour Organisation OSH and working time Conventions and by revising the UK's relationship with the Council of Europe's European Social Charter so that future governments will be unable to easily undermine or withdraw them. It has long been understood and accepted that expenditure on OSH protection is an investment which, as well as mitigating the incalculable human cost, repays itself many times over in the long term; it benefits employers and the state as well as workers. Nevertheless, those who in the wake of Brexit seek to turn the UK into Europe's 'off-shore sweatshop' promote the idea that OSH protection is 'red tape' which stifles productivity and profitability. They deliberately confuse the absurd actions of over cautious businesses and public authorities with occupational health and safety measures - and they have been very successful in embedding the myth of 'health and safety gone mad' into the national consciousness. Yet OSH is a deadly serious matter, literally a matter of life and death. It is about stopping employers from poisoning their workforces with toxic fumes; about stopping road haulage firms from obliging their drivers to work 15 hour days or 82 hour weeks (as many still blatantly do); about simple measures and procedures which prevent workers falling from a height, from being crushed by machinery or struck by moving vehicles. It is about monitoring workers in order to assess whether their health is being damaged by toxic substances, by musculoskeletal conditions induced by the demands of the workplace - or by work induced stress. It is about paying workers adequate sick pay so they can afford not to come into work when ill. It is about ensuring adequate precautions are taken by means of an effective system of inspection, warnings, prosecutions and the imposition of dissuasive penalties, as well as through advice and education. OSH is most emphatically not about stopping people from drinking hot coffee in case they scald themselves or any of the myriad absurd supposed 'health and safety' stories which appear regularly in the press. Nor is it about creating a 'Nanny State' or pandering to 'Snowflakes.' It is about stopping employers from killing and disabling their workers and about emulating the OSH standards productivity levels and associated with the most successful economies such as Germany and the Scandinavian nations. That is the aim of this fellowship.