REMEMBER THE DEAD, FIGHT FOR THE LIVING

RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: april 2010 :: RMTnews 12 Each year more people are killed at work than die in wars. Moreover, official figures bear little resemblance to the estimates made by the Hazards campaign, unions and Families Against Corporate Killing. It is thanks to such organisations that Workers’ Memorial Day is now officially recognised. The theme for this year’s events is ‘Unions Make Work Safer Everyday’. Research shows that unionised workplaces have half the number of fatalities of non-unionised ones. Having trade union representation in a workplace can help prevent deaths. The Conservative Party has repeatedly attacked workers’ rights and was responsible for the erosion of protection via anti-union legislation during the 80s and 90s. Both David Cameron and Lord Young have recently made spurious claims against health and safety legislation, claiming that there is a culture of ‘over- compliance’. Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of people injured each year at work. The Tories plan to strip away health and safety legislation and in particular the laws on risk assessment. This is a very dangerous move as many companies do not even comply with current duties. TUC general secretary Brendan Barber has said that anyone who believes that there is a culture of over-compliance needs some basic lessons in the reality of working life. “Last year 30 million days were lost due to injuries and ill- health caused by work and a quarter of a million people were injured at work. “These were caused by employers failing to comply with health and safety regulations” he said. The trade union movement believes that sentences proposed for organisations that negligently kill workers are too low. It is also astonishing that fines for breaches of legislation are not linked to the financial turnover as is the case for financial crimes. FACK (Families Against Corporate Killers) points out that financial crime such as fraud or anti-competition acts can be punished by severe penalties such as imprisonment of individuals and hefty fines up to 10 per cent of corporation’s turnover. “Yet, we are told, applying that link between fines and turnover in the case of killing someone is unworkable. “Suggested fines of £500,000 for corporate manslaughter, or £100,000 for causing death, will be a miniscule fraction of one per cent of the turnover of a large corporation,” it said. Judging by Cameron’s speech to last year’s Conservative Party conference, the most brutal Tory attacks would be on existing Health and Safety legislation. Instead of strengthening safety reps’ rights – which is what the TUC has been calling for since the Health & Safety at Work Act was first adopted – Cameron would remove the legal duty of employers to carry out risk assessments, remove the duty on local authorities to alert the public to ‘obvious hazards’ and attack rights to compensation. The TUC has put out a compensation myth-busting document which challenges every piece of misinformation circulated by the media and the Tories. The document also sets out three main points for addressing Employers Liability Insurance, which in the UK is the lowest in Europe: • Good health and safety practices should be rewarded, where companies with poor accident and injury records pay higher insurance premiums. • When someone is made ill or injured at work, the priority should be to allow the individual access to proper rehabilitation, greatly increasing the chances that they will make a full or early recovery. • Insurance companies should be more ready to admit liability earlier on to avoid running up costly medical and legal bills Workers Memorial Day is about remembering those killed at work as well as fighting for the living. The Tories are keen to ‘unburden’ the UK of its protective legislation. Cameron says that health and safety legislation has come a long way since the days of pushing children up chimneys. With Cameron in power, we would be taking several steps back towards those dark days. Commemorate Workers Memorial Day in your workplace on April 28 with two minutes silence at Noon. REMEMBER THE DEAD, FIGHT FOR THE LIVING This year International Workers’ Memorial Day on April 28 will be marked by the government for the first time