UK: UNION SAFETY WARNING OVER TUBE STAFF CUTS
Transport for London (TfL) plans to cut 600 frontline Tube customer service staff will have long term impacts on passenger safety, TSSA has warned. TSSA said members on London Underground “describe this as an accident waiting to happen. Our members want to be there for victims of assault and crime and deal with their reports sensitively, but soon we just won’t have the numbers.”
Source: TUC Risks 28 July TSSA news release.
US: ROOFER DIES AFTER FALLING OFF LIBRARY
A roofer died after plunging off the top of a library near the North Carolina coast, officials said. The contractor was working on the Morehead City Library when he fell on Wednesday, July 27. He later died from his injuries. The man was identified in a news release as 36-year-old Miguel Trinidad Delgado of Beulaville. The city said it had hired A-D’s Metal Roofing Co., which started a repair project on the roof days before the worker’s death.
Source: Confined Space, 2 August
UK: PPE PROFITEERS UNDERMINED COVID SAFETY
Unite has said ‘PPE profiteers’ must be held to account following a damning report from the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee (PAC). PAC identified ‘significant failings’ in the management of 176 PPE contracts worth £2.7 billion that led to a stockpile of almost 4 billion items that were not needed. Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “The guilty profiteers must be held to account and so must the government ministers who abused their position to fast track firms they had links with.”
Source: TUC Risks 28 July Unite news release. PAC news release and report
US: FORKLIFT ACCIDENT CLAIMS WOMAN’S LIFE
Officials with the Wichita County Sheriff’s Office said an investigation is underway after a woman died from injuries sustained during an industrial accident over the weekend. The incident apparently occurred sometime before 6 p.m. on Saturday, July 30, at Vitro Architectural Glass. Authorities said deputies responded to the United Regional emergency room around 6pm in reference to a death investigation. Deputies said the reporting party told them a woman had been brought to the emergency room by AMR after she was run over by a forklift. The 31 year old woman died a short time after her arrival at the emergency room.
Source: Confined Space, 2 August