19 May 2016
Salon owners will, like everyone else, be casting their votes in next month’s EU referendum. But, whatever the outcome, the National Hairdressers’ Federation will carry on fighting the industry’s corner within Europe.
The NHBF represents over 5,000 salon owners up and down the country, all with very different views on our future inside or outside Europe. As such, it is not the Federation’s place to make the case for one side of the argument or the other.
Nevertheless, what happens in Europe can directly affect our industry, just as domestic legislation and red tape often has an impact on how salons run their businesses.
The NHBF has, for example, been lobbying hard within Europe for the past two years over possible restrictions on high-powered hairdryers. Our argument – that switching to lower-powered hairdryers would simply mean it takes longer to dry a client’s hair, increasing costs and creating health problems through holding hairdryers for longer – has meant that, for now at least, it appears hairdryers are no longer in the European Commission’s sights.
We have also been active in working to limit the impact on salons of potentially onerous and expensive health and safety reforms proposed by Coiffure EU (which represents European haidressing trade bodies) and UNI Europa (which represents European trade unions), arguing that existing UK law already provides adequate control of risks for people working in salons.
Some of the more extreme proposals have been removed, though there is still work to be done on proposals that, we believe, go further than necessary, such as requiring workers to wear protective gloves when washing hair and stipulating gloves must "stretch beyound the wrists when washing".
A third area where the NHBF has been active has been in the discussions currently going on within Europe about finding a common position on testing for allergies on hair colourants that contain the chemical paraphenylenediamine (PPD), which can cause allergic reactions.