'Honoured and proud'

UniteLive is thrilled to announce that Unite national health and safety adviser Rob Miguel has won the prestigious Safety and Health Practitioner (SHP) award for Most Influential in 2024.

UniteLive caught up with Rob, who said he was “honoured and proud” to have won the award, but he emphasised the award was the culmination of a collective effort.

“More than anything, I’m proud for our union, because all the hard work of our reps is reflected in this award,” he said.

Rob’s interest in workplace health and safety developed early on, when he was an apprentice.

“I left school at 14 and I started an apprenticeship as an electrician and maintenance engineer. This was in the 70s when health and safety was nowhere near what it is now,” Rob explained. “I may have been young and clueless, but I noticed from the outset we were breathing in dust with no protection; I noticed noise pollution and the accidents happening around me. I worked at a construction site where someone fell off a roof not far form where I was working.”

Rob also recalled maintaining a lift at a the top of a big tower of a fire station.

“We were given an old door to place across so we could get from one end to the other – this was 200 feet in the air,” he noted. “You can imagine what it was like back in those days.”   

Being exposed to all this so early in his career, Rob soon decided he wanted to become a shop steward and health and safety rep.

Rob later went on to become a Unite officer and subsequently took on the position he has today as Unite’s national health and safety advisor. The breadth of his work is astonishing – much of it is highlighted in Rob’s nomination for the award, which was put forward by three unions and can be read here.

But Rob highlighted some of his proudest moments, including the work he undertook during the Covid pandemic.

“Just before the first lockdown I was abroad at the time, and I almost got trapped there,” he explained.

There were a lot of unknowns at the beginning of the pandemic – and a collective sense of panic. But it was apparent to Rob as the lead on health and safety for the biggest union in the UK that he had to act quickly and decisively.

“We got to work right away and we were the first union to put out health and safety guidance on Covid,” Rob explained.

Rob also tirelessly lobbied to make Covid a workplace issue. In the beginning of the pandemic, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) refused to regulate it as a health and safety issue at work – it was considered a public health issue. But thanks to Rob’s efforts, it became a recognised workplace issue.

“I developed a series of documents on Covid risk assessments, including assessments for vulnerable workers. Working with the NHS, we looked at the various vulnerabilities – if you were BAEM, you were vulnerable; if you were pregnant, you were vulnerable; older people were vulnerable too. This type of guidance had never been done before. It was a massive piece of work that was completed in a very short timeframe.”

Rob added that he was also proud to have worked with Unite’s HR department in developing Covid health and safety guidance and standards for the union internally.

Another highlight of Rob’s time as national health and safety advisor was twenty years ago, when he helped lobby the government to legislate against a House of Lords decision on mesothelioma compensation. Thanks to Rob and Unite’s efforts, tens of thousands of people with mesothelioma were eligible to claim compensation for workplace asbestos exposure.

And on a more global scale, Rob worked with the Building Workers International (BWI), a global federation of unions, to develop online training for people in countries where trade unions are illegal, or where unions don’t have the funds to provide such training for their members.

“That was another really proud moment for me – knowing that reps around the world were getting that health and safety training that they needed but wouldn’t have received otherwise,” Rob said.

For all of Rob’s accomplishments, he’s not one to rest on his laurels. He tells UniteLive of the many projects that he’s working on, including United Minds, an ambitious workplace mental health campaign. Such a campaign has never been more important at a time when an astonishing 30 per cent of workers are suffering from work-related mental ill health or stress. The campaign provides reps with tools and materials to help them negotiate better management processes on mental health and stress in the workplace.

United Minds is also lobbying the government on several workplace mental health issues, including demanding a code of practice to ensure employee assistance programmes have high standards; that employers undertake robust mental health and stress risk assessments; and that work-related suicides are reportable to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), among a number of other demands.

Rob is also overseeing similar campaigns on musculoskeletal disorders as well as initiatives on work-related respiratory diseases such as mesothelioma and silicosis.

“On asbestos in particular, we’re continuing to push for a timed removal programme of asbestos in schools and social housing,” Rob explained. “We’re also calling for a national register, so anyone can look up any building online to check if it has asbestos.”

Another key aim of Rob’s work on asbestos is bringing down the legal workplace exposure limit.

 “Since Brexit, the UK asbestos exposure limit is ten times higher than the EU because the EU has continued to make strides on this, and we’ve fallen behind,” Rob explained.

Rob went on to highlight that Unite maintains registers on asbestos, silica and diesel fumes – the only union to do so. If workers believe they’ve been exposed, they can go to the respective website and register their exposure. These databases allow Unite’s legal services to trace witnesses who may be able to support legal claims for other members who have developed workplace respiratory diseases.

Last week, we highlighted how Unite member and electrician Danny Thomas made use of this register in our story here.

Although much of the health and safety landscape has improved since Rob was a young apprentice working on his first building site, progress in many areas has stalled.

“The safety side of things has improved dramatically,” Rob said. “Guardrails on scaffolding, the emphasis on safety to avoid trips and slips in the workplace – these are standard. We still have far too many accidents including fatal accidents in the workplace. But when you compare these to the ‘health’ side of ‘health and safety’, the numbers are staggering.

“A conservative HSE estimate shows around 20,000 people die each year from work-related ill health –but this figure is grossly underestimated,” Rob added.

This is because deaths from cardiovascular disease caused by work-related stress and exposure to toxins, as well as work-related traffic accidents and suicides are not included in the official data.

“The figure is likely to be well over double HSE official figures,” he noted.

“If we take into account workplace respiratory diseases or work-related suicides, or the long-term damage done by musculoskeletal disorders, it shows we haven’t come to grips with workplace health at all.”

And so it is these three areas – musculoskeletal disorders, respiratory diseases, and mental health — where Rob’s focus currently lies in his dogged determination to improve our workplaces.

“They’re killing the most people, and causing the greatest amount of suffering,” Rob said.

Rob’s resolve is evident in the way he speaks of the collective health and safety challenges we face — it is no wonder that he’s won the UK’s premier health and safety award, and Unite heartily congratulates him.

You can find out more about Unite’s health and safety work on our website here.

By Hajera Blagg

Photo credit: SHP website