The NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi have sent an open letter to Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Brooke van Velden, following another round of devastating job cuts at WorkSafe.
“Aotearoa New Zealand’s record on workplace health and safety is costing the lives of so many workers, and instead of working to turn that record around, we have a Minister who is making decisions that will cost even more lives,” said NZCTU Acting President Rachel Mackintosh.
“WorkSafe already lost 15% of its staff in the last 12 months – 113 roles. Now the organisation will lose another 54 roles, which will critically undermine its core functions as our workplace health and safety regulator.
“Alongside these job cuts, WorkSafe have announced they are disestablishing the health team, which will undoubtedly lead to an increase in health-related harm and deaths in workplaces across the country.
“Dozens of New Zealand workers die each year as a result of workplace injuries. In addition, estimates suggest that 750-900 workers die each year from work-related occupational diseases such as asbestosis and cancers.
“This hollowing out of our health and safety regulator is deliberate. WorkSafe is being set up to fail. The Minister and her Government have an aversion to regulation, yet good regulation is essential to good health and safety and saving workers lives.
“Workers will need to issue the Minister with an improvement notice if she doesn’t start taking health and safety seriously and use her role to bring down our abysmal injury and death rates.
“This Minister is overseeing an all-out assault on working people – while gutting WorkSafe, she is leaving workers in the ditch on Holidays Act reform, undermining personal grievance claims, and threatening to weaken health and safety law. This is on top of scrapping fair pay agreements, bringing back 90-day fire at will agreements and redrafting employment law on behalf of the multinational corporation, Uber.
“Working people are sick and tired of this Minister and her extreme anti-worker agenda. It’s well past time she learnt the requirements of her role and put the health and wellbeing of workers above the interests of big business.
“We are putting Brooke van Velden on notice and saying enough is enough,” said Mackintosh.