PROACTIVELY improving health and safety should be a cornerstone of any employer, private or public, large or small. Legislation and guidelines are in place and supposed to ensure that every employer adheres and takes an approach to health and safety that places the welfare of workers as a central priority.

We have found this week that this is an attitude to health and safety that is not always pursued by employers. Concerned about what we were hearing from our members at Mowi fish processing plant in Fife, we commissioned our friends at Unity Consulting Scotland (supported by input from Scottish Hazards) to research working conditions relating to health and safety and write up the findings. The report we produced, On the Line, Workers Treatment and Conditions at Mowi, Rosyth, makes for grim reading.

No worker in Britain in 2025 should have to experience the working conditions facing our members at Mowi in Rosyth and all because it looks like they have gamed the health and safety committee, which stands in stark contrast to how health and safety committees should be elected and should act proactively without fear or favour from management to drive improvements in health and safety. Instead, we have very serious concerns that members of the health and safety committee are certainly not elected and quite possibly “selected” and “appointed.”

If there was a health and safety committee made up of trade unionists we know it would be well-trained, proactive and autonomous from the interests of management and it would nip issues in the bud, while continuously striving to benefit the health, safety, welfare and wellbeing of the workforce. Unionised workplaces are healthier and safer workplaces.

The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union has sought to engage Mowi to help it drive improvements. But it has rejected every attempt we have made to meet and speak with them, let alone recognise us and enter into a collective bargaining agreement with our union in the way they have done with our Norwegian sister union, which has of course resulted in better pay, terms and conditions for Norwegian workers.

By not having union representation and a less than proactive health and safety committee, there are a plethora of issues affecting the health and safety of our members at Mowi. The report, based on testimony of workers and union officials who represent employees at Mowi, refutes the many announcements made by Mowi in their annual reports about how much they value the human rights of their workers.

Lack of toilets, time-limited toilet breaks, workers having to get toilet cover before they go, inadequate canteen facilities — including a lack of seating for workers often working 12-hour shifts — lack of mitigation to help workers working in cold working temperatures for long periods of time and manual handling practices that could be resulting in injuries from repetitive work are some of the concerns raised in the report.

Strong concerns were also expressed about their sickness absence policy, which is deemed unfair because it gives discretion to managers about whether a worker gets sick pay if they are off sick. This not only leaves workers in quandary, as to whether they get company sick pay or statutory sick pay but in addition they are also excluded from the Christmas bonus payment of £250. In some cases staff have had their company sick pay withdrawn even if they are off work due to workplace accidents and injuries.  

As my colleague Mark McHugh, Scottish organiser for the BFAWU, said this week: “Through the work we do representing workers and from talking to members it seems that too often that health and wellbeing, physical and mental, is a secondary consideration for the management of Mowi at Rosyth. At times it feels like the ‘workers are treated worse than the fish.’

“This is contrary to their self-congratulatory proclamations about how much they respect human rights. We are concerned that basic rights are not applied at their Rosyth plant. No adult should be told when to go to the toilet, if they can go and how long they can go for. It is ridiculous and wrong but sadly this is the culture that this report has exposed.

“If there was a functioning and proactive health and safety culture then many of the issues we have raised in the report would have been dealt with, the fact they haven’t been demonstrates how unsatisfactory their approach is.”

Every worker going to work should feel that their health, safety and wellbeing is a central priority of their employer. But, we have found that our members at Mowi are not treated with the respect and the dignity that every worker deserves.

Our report outlines many of the issues we have concerns about, based on the work we have done with members and speaking directly with them about their observations and experiences. We truly hope that our report acts as a wake-up call to management at the plant.

We want workers to be paid fairly and for their health and safety to be improved and prioritised. We know that unionised workplaces are better workplaces and help drive improvements in health and safety and in pay. That’s why we will continue to do our best to recruit the numbers we need to compel Mowi to recognise our union.