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Trade Union Congress - Findings on the Implementation of COVID-19 Rules in the Workplace

on Wednesday, 21 April 2021.

The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has published a survey for 2020/21 involving more than 2,100 workplace safety representatives to understand and support safety representatives at work.

The survey has revealed that a number of employers are not following coronavirus (COVID-19) rules as well as they should and could be doing more to keep their workers safe.

Survey findings on COVID-19 and health and safety at work revealed the following:

  • Although employers are required to consult with recognised trade union safety representatives on health, safety and welfare matters, 27% of safety representatives reported that they were not involved at all with their employer's risk assessment(s) in the last two years. Over a fifth of those surveyed (23%) said they were not confident in the adequacy of the risk assessment and 9% even said their employer had not carried out a risk assessment at all.
  • 83% of safety representatives stated that some of their employees had tested positive for COVID-19 in their workplace (ie that some sort of work-related outbreak had occurred, with over half of these outbreaks involving a 'significant' number of cases).
  • Only 31% of safety representatives believe that social distancing rules and physical barriers between colleagues in the workplace were being implemented by their employer all of the time and generally social distancing does not always appear to have been adhered to.
  • As far as PPE was concerned, 40% of safety representatives stated that PPE was either unsatisfactory, or non-existent.

According to the survey, 65% of workplace safety representatives have seen an increase in mental health concerns from employees since the beginning of the pandemic and 70% of employees referred to stress as a workplace hazard.

Coronavirus HE blogs


If you are concerned about how any of the statistics from the TUC survey may impact your university and would like advice on managing COVID-19 related health and safety in the workplace, we can help.

Please contact Jane Byford in our Higher Education team on 07909 656 764, or complete the form below.

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