By W Kearney, (Transport Union) Reprinted from Building Worker. DRAMATIC introduction isn't it? You may agree after reading my story.
the building industry. Don't get me wrong -a lot of finishing trades, they can come into a building which has taken two years to build, proceed with their ceiling installation, usually in highly skilled sub-contract gangs, and be in and out in four to eight weeks.
Competition between ceiling is tough. They work to basic capitalist lines, their objective being high productivity while paying the least labour costs possible. The money racket and labour rip-off are a story on their own. deserving a paze or even a book to tell.
There is another aspect of this trade that overrides the wrong side: the terrible health hazards faced by every ceiling fixer. Hazards that demand urgent, very urgent, action.
Fixers new to the trade, fixers who have been at the me or eased - beware! For fixers like myself, who started in the ous ana carly ous, are now paying a terrible price.
1973 the first cases started to show.
Workmates of mine, with whom I have made contact since becoming ill, have all fallen victim to prolonged ill-health, complete finish their working Ceiling contractors work on the fringes of lives and early death. This is the legacy we have, and which a lot more will inherit In the never ending scarcoor big money, there is total disregard and basic ignorance risks. The emphasis on how many metres, how much a metre. metres done the more pay (less 10 per cent retention, of course!)
No mention of what pe of material, what typ Insulation and definite Iy no mention or sately alrangements — decent scaffolding, face masks and so on.
Many of the fixers who started in the early 50s, when suspended ceilings as a specific trade got off the were ex-chippies, attracted by the ability to increase tell carnings.
A lot, if not most, were ordinary Klaus first as helpers and mates. They then became fixers themselves, always finding plenty of work in a fast growing allied trade.
Suspended ceilings with their acoustic, therIllal values. decorative finish hiding unsightly serVICES became favourite with architects. Architects delighted to accommodate building regulations.
of the strongest regulations was fire protection: it vou titted a tire rated ceiling you could be in for a huge drop in insurance premiums.
The favourite fire rated ceiling was asbestos screwed up or laid in. That is, drilled by hand, and screwed, all at head level, to a metal grid frame.
Dust The laid in version was handled the asbestos tiles and laid grid HilO frames, always showering himself with dust. Then with dust still rising and trapped above, he would then reach above ceiling to secure tiles with clips.
Both these applications, involved and filing Sawing asbestos sheets. Most of it was done in confined areas (usually all buildings had windows in). Beams were also cased, Was as • well. tons and tons of asbestos were used.
Not all ceilings were
Socialist Challenge By Tessa van Gelderen THE explosion at a Manchester chemical plant last Sun. day night confirmed the fears and the terror of all those who have to live under such threats. One person killed, another seriously injured, and a village is all too aware that it's been 'lucky', such is the enormity of living with dangerous chemicals.
As Labour MP Tom Pendry, who has called for an inquiry into disaster, said, 'If it had not been for the vigilance of the fire service and if there had been a wind instead of a dead calm, there could have been terrible It is unfortunately the old, old story, as old as the profit motive itself.
Of there's always an outcry, after the done and people's homes and lives lie in ruins. Aberfan, Flixborough Seveso In nor thern Italy have all become definitions for tragedies.
But they are tragedie that could so easily have been needs had been put before a few people's greed
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their work is far more important than carpet laying. Where the similarity comes in is like in