The People's Health
1943-10 1943 1940s 36 pages about whitewashing the stalls, kept the dirty hay outside, wore clean overalls and generally raised the standard of hygiene to heights a few years ago considered impossible. The quality of the milk and the quantity were both improved. What was done with the cow sheds can...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
Newcastle-on-Tyne : North-East District Committee, Communist Party
1943
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/5408C357-55DF-4C7F-B756-485484CD716C http://hdl.handle.net/10796/47C24FC1-BB1E-4B80-863E-F9ADA92EE918 |
| Summary: | 1943-10
1943
1940s
36 pages
about whitewashing the stalls, kept the dirty hay outside, wore clean overalls and generally raised the standard of hygiene to heights a few years ago considered impossible. The quality of the milk and the quantity were both improved. What was done with the cow sheds can be done with the factories. FACTORY VENTILATION. Probably the question regarding factory health most often raised when I am having discussions with shop stewards' committees and trade union branches, is that of ventilation. The black-out was done so badly in the country that the Ministry of Labour actually issued a warning leaflet known as Factory Black-out — Form 301, stating that serious dangers to workers' health were arising as a result of the manner in which many factories had been blacked out. This was issued in 1939, and yet we find in the Annual Report of the Factory Inspector for 1942, this sentence : "Factories are still being found that at night are practically sealed boxes." He is at pains to point out in this report that workers are becoming more fully alive to health in the factory and are now beginning to make greater use of the opportunities provided in the Factory Act to bring about further improvements. He pays a tribute to the popular pressure that is being exerted to demand better conditions. As an example he tells of the factory manager who thought that because his factory was a new one, the question of ventilation did not matter. It is not only the workers who are careless and sometimes stupid about their factory health conditions ; there are managers too, who are idiotically stupid on these matters. I remember a factory manager who was supplying ointment to his workpeople as a cure for dermatitis and nystagmus at the same time. WHAT IS NEEDED. How are some of these problems to be dealt with? There must be changes as this Conference shows clearly enough. All questions of health and safety must be looked upon as basic interests for the worker and for the organised working class movement. The interest is there in spite of the statements made so often to the contrary by managements and trade union officials. It has never been my experience to meet with anything but the keenest interest in health. Workers are anxious to be safe and well at work. What they are diffident about and where they do lack confidence, is that they feel they lack specialised medical knowledge and that without such knowledge questions of health and safety cannot be taken up. But, you do not need specialised knowledge to know what is wrong with factory working conditions. Any ordinary intelligent worker knows it. They know what the basic requirements of health are. Air, light, food and rest. All that is needed is confidence in your ability to deal with these things. There is such a shortage of nurses and doctors and what we might call the higher trained technical workers, that it is impossible now, at this stage of the war, to cover the whole field adequately with technical advice, fully equipped with the training a doctor or nurse usually possesses. I think it is essential to bring into operation the dilutee system. We 8
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |