Day 181 - 01 Nov 95 - Page 43


     
     1        I am waiting for a question.
     2
     3   MR. RAMPTON:  I know.  That is not my fault.
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL: You are waiting for a question, because
     6        I interrupted Mr. Rampton.  That is the reason.  Yes,
     7        Mr. Rampton.  Page 106.
     8
     9   MR. RAMPTON:  Let us skip page 106, if we may, Mr. Pearson, and
    10        go straight to 108, "distribution hotels and catering
    11        repairs".  For that category, which includes hotels and
    12        catering, the reported serious accidents, including
    13        fatalities -- injuries, sorry -- are 395 per 100,000, or
    14        39.5 per 1,000?
    15        A.  Yes.  It is something around -- yes, it is something
    16        around just over half of the national average, if you like,
    17        of all industries shown at the bottom of the page.  I think
    18        my concern on the health and safety front, health and
    19        safety work has always been an area of particular concern
    20        and interest to me, particularly during my time as a trade
    21        union official for 11 years, because the brief point is
    22        this, that it is not so much in the catering trade, it is
    23        the deaths and the serious injuries -- though of course
    24        they feature -- it is the less serious but not minor
    25        injuries that concern me.
    26
    27        When you referred earlier to my visits to the two
    28        restaurants, I did see the accident books for those units,
    29        although I did ask and was not provided with a copy of the
    30        accident schedules.  But what I recall from the accident
    31        books was a run of really not reportable injuries.  This is
    32        the characteristic of the catering industry that is not
    33        reflected in these statistics.
    34
    35        It is, however -- the point about the industry is that it
    36        is a risky industry, and it is risky because of the
    37        pressures of work; and in the catering area, and
    38        particularly we are talking about kitchens and so forth,
    39        you have got various problems to deal with:  you have wet
    40        floors, you have hot surfaces, you have crowding, you have
    41        sharp instruments; and the injuries you would get would
    42        tend to be non-fatal, and they would tend to be not
    43        reported and not appear in these statistics.
    44
    45   Q.   Non-fatal -- I mean, broken bones, time in hospitals, three
    46        days off work.  I am trying to summarise it.
    47        A.  It is a cuts and burns industry.
    48
    49   Q.   Yes, exactly.
    50        A.  It is cuts and burns.  It is a fracture, it is a fall 
    51        industry. 
    52 
    53   Q.   Fractures are reportable?
    54        A.  Yes, yes, absolutely.
    55
    56   Q.   No, we are not dealing with those.  It is a very low rate
    57        here.  Making all due allowance, as I say, for
    58        under-reporting, hotels and catering is less than half the
    59        total for the service industry generally, or the service
    60        industries generally, is it not?

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