Air Passengers to be Requested to Pack Light
Baggage handlers in airports are required to lift heavy loads every day as part of their work. As a result they are five times more likely to get injuries, some of which are so intense as to cause permanent disability.
According to Steve Turner, Unite union’s National Officer, these workers actually lift the weight equal to an elephant every day. Aware to the plight of these workers, Unite has decided to launch a ‘pack less’ campaign across airports in the
Turner also wants to disabuse people of the notion that baggage handling is a fully mechanized process. He says that the ground reality is that each piece of baggage gets handled by a worker approximately a dozen times during its journey and because of the cramped places the handlers have to work in, there are high incidences of musculoskeletal diseases among them.
This “pack less” campaign will be taken up simultaneously in
Besides this, Unite is also working towards getting the HSE and the government to enact a regulation to protect the baggage handlers. The European Commission is also planning to create a regulation for workers across
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