CLEANERS’ HEALTH AND SAFETY ADVICE
CLEANERS’ HEALTH AND SAFETY ADVICE The outsourcing of cleaning to private companies means cleaners are treated like a lower tier of worker. Cleaning contract firms drive down wages and cut corners around workplace health and safety to win contracts and maximise their profits. This means that cleaners’ workplace health and safety is compromised. RMT has written this guidance to assist RMT cleaner grade members in the range of health and safety problems they face at work.
RISK ASSESSMENT AND EMPLOYER’S RESPONSIBILITIES HSE five steps to risk assessment: https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/risk/steps-needed-to-manage-risk.htm Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 employers have a duty of care to ensure the ‘health, safety and welfare’ of their employees. As part of this duty, they must identity and then risk assess any hazards to health and safety that their employees or others may be exposed to within the workplace or as a result of how the work is carried out. The HSE explain that employers should carry out an assessment before they do work which presents a risk of injury or ill health. Risk assessments must meet a ‘suitable and sufficient’ legal standard. This term is not defined in legislation, but the TUC explain it to mean that all potential hazards have been identified, the likelihood of harm evaluated, and the level of risk estimated, and measures to control the risks to a standard “as low as reasonably practicable” (ALARP).
Risk assessments should: •
be written by a “competent person”. The HSE definition of a competent person is: “Someone who has sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities that allow them to assist you properly”
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assess hazards encountered every day and look to eliminate them. Where elimination is not possible, measures should be introduced to reduce the effect to the lowest level possible
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include RMT safety representative in the risk assessment process as the role of the representative is to represent the views of their members on workplace h&s issues, safety reps have a legal right to be consulted on risk assessment outcomes and to request that the assessment is reviewed if they think it does not meet the legal standard of “suitable and sufficient” 1