THE comments attributed to Boris Johnson on Monday of this week, suggesting he would have rather seen the “bodies piled high in the streets” rather than entertain a further lockdown, speak to a view where human life is compared to commerce and profit — all too prevalent among the capitalist political class.

The comments may be disputed, but the Westminster government’s reluctance to introduce safety-first measures during the first year of the pandemic was all too obvious.

Schemes like Eat Out to Help Out, the encouragement to return to offices and the reopening of non-essential manufacturing and construction all spoke of a calculated political decision to risk lives in the pursuit of profit.

It is generally recognised in the trade union community that the Scottish government’s approach to safety throughout this period has been better.

However, even here, the sense grew in the second half of 2020 that immediate economic and political pressures were influencing policy at the expense of safety.

The trade union movement opposed the early reopening of schools and universities and during the third lockdown the failure to close non-essential manufacturing and construction.

We also believe that when a full inquiry takes place into health and safety in our residential care sector, it will confirm that serious mistakes were made at both national policy and local workplace level.

Having been subjected to over 150,000 deaths overall and over 10,000 here in Scotland, many that might have been prevented, it must now be acknowledged that our governments have collectively failed us in their primary duty — the duty to protect the lives of their citizens.

This is the second International Workers’ Memorial Day that will have been held during the pandemic and again, we will pay special tribute to those who have lost their lives due to workplace Covid-19 infection.

As well as the front-line workers who were put at risk undertaking essential work, this includes those who contracted the virus undertaking work that was not necessary.

Too many workers were denied basic health and safety protections over the past year and unions fought a daily battle to guarantee effective PPE.

Whether through Covid-19, through preventable accident or through industrial disease, bad work kills.

Bad work shortens people’s lives and causes life-affecting illness. So, while we remember those who have lost their lives through Covid-19, we also remember all those who have died because of their work.

This is an international commemoration where we mark the fact that across the world there are a millions of deaths each year from work-related injuries and diseases.

Here in Scotland our event includes a speaker from Scottish Action on Asbestos which continues to fight for justice for those who have contracted and are sadly still to contract, asbestos-related diseases.

The international theme for today is Health and Safety is a Human Right. To this, the STUC and Scottish Hazards have added “let’s make that a reality.”

In so doing we recognise that in other parts of the world, human rights and rights at work are weaker than they are here, but that here too we need to rebalance the responsibility away from the worker and towards the employer.

We are also making clear that, whether in Scotland, the rest of Britain or around the world, human rights are only as strong as the democratic and collective levers which enforce them.

At government level that means a stronger and better-resourced Health and Safety Executive.

At workplace level that means union organising and trade union recognition.

In non-organised workplaces it means creating an army of trade union roving health and safety reps and an expectation from government that employers should give them workplace access.

In the depths of this tragedy, we must remind people today that workplace death, injury and disease are a daily occurrence.

We must use the period ahead to make workplaces safer, to strengthen workers’ voices and collective power and to bring employer and government to account.

Roz Foyer is general secretary of the Scottish TUC.