Language barriers mean new dangers at work
December 10, 2004
Concern that migrant workers are missing out on safety training because employers provide safety material only in English has prompted the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to produce a leaflet in 19 languages.
Your Health, Your Safety: A Guide for Workers provides information about:
- safety rights at work
- the level of safety training that workers should expect from their employers
- who workers should complain to if they believe their safety is being compromised by poor workplace practices.
The HSE says that so far in 2004 there have been a number of fatalities involving migrant workers employed in the UK, despite the duty of employers under the Health and Safety at Work, etc Act 1974 to provide all of their employees with the appropriate safety training to enable them to do their jobs without risk of illness or injury.
The HSE and the TUC are anxious that safety training delivered purely in English is not being sufficiently well understood by migrant workers employed in UK workplaces, many of whom have only a limited grasp of English.
The new leaflets have been published in Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, Greek, Gujarati, Pashto, Portuguese, Polish, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian and Welsh, as well as English, and represent an attempt to improve safety awareness for this growing segment of the UK workforce.
The leaflets can be obtained from the HSE website.
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