How many deaths and serious injuries are caused by the massive influx of foreign workers who can not understand English? To all you managers who induct a foreigner to work on site and know he can not understand what you are saying and still allow him to enter the work place, you are culpable. If it happens on your site, make sure you report it to the HSE. These irresponsible fools who run our sites and put money before lives, need putting behind bars.

We did have a thread on this before, which was in the General Discussion area, I've now moved it to Health & Safety.

A few people have voiced their concerns about the issue, particularly the problems caused by the language barrier.

Also, deaths involving migrants were up 50% last year.

I have just sat the new IOSH courses and was very impressed with somthing that came out in them,,,, these have been set with the premiss of the Hse and the UKCG and have been tailored to suit the requirements laid by them,,,,, the safe worker passport which looks to be adopted over the CSCS is a days course and you sit in a group on open forum with a writen exam at the close,,,,,,,,,, the issue is that you sit in front of the examiner all day and you need to understand him and him you,,,,,,,,,,,, now while i dont have a problem with forign workers i do have a problem with the understanding of the language i speak,,,,,,, i speak english and as someone who oversees the safety on my sites i need to know that the man in front of me does also,,,,,,,, now if you go for the new safe worker passport which is already becoming a must with a lot of organisations  ,, the examiner has the right to reject you on the grounds of understanding,,,,,

simply put if you dont speak the language he speaks he can not pass you,,,,,,,,,, this in my opinion is a good way to save lives its not political  it is plain simple practical safety at its best,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, IF YOU DONT UNDERSTAND THE MAN IN CHARGE YOU ARE NOT A SAFE WORKER,,,,,,,,, A DANGER TO YOURSELF AND OTHERS.

 The beginning of last year i worked on the Olympic stadium for Morrisons!

One day half the site workforce dissappeared and the rest of us couldn't work because we had no banksmen!

Turned out they all got wind that Immigration officers were on site!

They all had CSCS cards though!

Work that one out!

Happens on all big sites Supadoopa.. I,ve been on 2 massive sites over the last 5 years and it happend once a year.

All i can offer to pople is hope a while back i went to a trianing agency to update an NVQ and saw something to make me smile the trainer on snapping away at the guys with his camera gave any one who did not look ,,, um   english,,,,, a piece of paper and asked them to read it , if they could not he sent them away ,, he was called racist by one chap ,,, he laughted and said why if you cannot read a sentance that asks for you name age address ect , how do you think you will pass a management exam   ha ha now thats a way to help cure death by forign worker,

The problem with the CSCS is that you can take it in about any native tounge    so tell me when are they going to do it in bloody english

We can shout and scream till we'r blue in the face,fact is nobody cares for the english trades man anymore,we're not wanted,by the big builders,my last job in london's regents park out of the 20 or so plasterers i was the only english speeking one,that's how they get over comuincation thing,dont have anyone who can speek english