Finian McGrath opposed to protecting workers' rights

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Friday November 07, 2003 11:53 by Daithí

You would think, with all the work that he has done with unions and for people with disabilities etc. that this TD would be in favour of a measure designed to protect the health of workers - whether they work in bars or otherwise.

But yet we see him standing up in the Dail to speak against the tobacco regulations. Not only this, but he also tried to claim that most cancer deaths were caused by other factors! Now it is true that the Government are using this issue as a distraction from the mess they are making of the health service - and also that anti-cancer measures need a lot of work - but seeing him try and belittle the cancer-causing properties of tobacco smoke is disgusting; it reads like a script written by the tobacco industry.

Clearly bar workers are a lesser class of people to those who work in hairdressers or bingo halls (for example), where smoking is already banned. McGrath wants a sensible compromise in the interests of the "decent taxpayer". This would involve designated smoking areas.

I hope he never gets to have any influence on health and safety law. No doubt we will have old buildings with asbestos and asbestos-free zones - and building sites with stable scaffolding on one side and wobbly scaffolding on the other. I mean, you wouldn't want to be going too far in protecting the safety of workers or anything, would you?

He says it's a "health police" measure, but the law is not designed to make people look after their own health (that's another day's argument). It is, quite simply, a pro-worker move. There are few enough of those with a FF-PD government. Thankfully, the other independent and left-wing TDs didn't throw their support behind McGrath on this point, and he just ends up looking like an apologist for industry - I'm not sure whether it's the tobacco industry, or the drinks industry - or both.