Look Into The Human Face Of Workplace Killing

The half a million people at the weekend of 26th March demonstrating against the Con-Dem(ned) coalition plans for the decimation of health and safety protection for workers in the UK, amongst other major issues such as the NHS, public services and terms and conditions of employment; was a clear indictment of the government's callous approach to the people of the UK.

As Dave Joyce, CWU's National Health, Safety & Environment Officer reminds us in his letter to branches LTB332/11, the human face of workplace killing was lost amongst a sea of half a million faces marching through London that day.

In it, he highlights the work of one organisation, Families Against Corporate Killers - FACK.

FACK is a national campaigning network which will campaign to stop workers and others being killed in preventable incidents and will direct bereaved families to sources of legal help and emotional support.

Relatives of people killed at work formed this national campaigning group. Fack believes families bereaved as a result of unsafe and unhealthy workplaces are angry and frustrated.

They feel they have been robbed twice: Once of their loved ones in incidents that should have been prevented by employers simply obeying the law on workplace health and safety; and secondly of their right to justice.

Dave's LTB begins by advising members of FACK and that a DVD has been produced by them to illustrate how negligent employers harm their workers and their families:

"As Workers Memorial Day approaches we are reminding you of the availability of 'Face the FACKs - The human face of workplace killing' which is a DVD from Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK). The DVD features personal accounts from family members bereaved by work. It is intended to be a campaign and training tool on business responsibility for workplace health and safety.

FACK asked Lord Young to ’FACE the FACKs’ and watch their DVD before he considered his report proposing the deregulation of Health and Safety and Tory/LibDem Coalition plans condemning more workers to death, injury and ill-health.

Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK) made the DVD to show how employers’ negligence of health and safety killed ten members of their families and the horrendous consequences.

Called ’Face the FACKS: the human cost of workplace killing’, the DVD is a powerful indictment of employers’ carelessness with workers lives, their flouting of even the most basic, and common sense, health and safety requirements, and how the justice system does not treat the consequent taking of a human life with sufficient seriousness, often leaving families feeling the employers have got away with it, while failing to send out sufficiently deterrent messages to other employers, and so more workers are killed every day.

When a pre-view of ’Face the FACKs’ was shown to 450 safety reps at the Hazards 2010 conference, it received overwhelmingly positive feedback and the overall message to Lord Young was ’Before you deregulate health and safety, watch this!’ And to the press: ’I hope the media who are so quick to rubbish the laws put in place to protect the workers will see this and re-think their current point of view. ’

All the members of Families Against Corporate Killers have experienced the death of a member of their family but not in an unfortunate or rare accident. They were killed because their employer failed to obey health and safety laws.

The sons, husbands, daughters, fathers, brothers and sisters of FACK members were burned to death in explosions in recycling, in garages, in steel works, in demolishing chimneys; electrocuted because live wires were not locked off; fell off unsafely constructed scaffolding; were crushed by heavy railings or by machinery lacking safety cradles; were buried under tonnes of rubble; trapped in machinery being used for prohibited jobs, or killed by defective equipment. All of these deaths could have been avoided, but weren’t as employers failed to obey the law, flouted their own rules, failed to carry out risk assessment or failed to have any noticeable safe systems in place at all.

The FACK DVD shows the stories of these far from rare and far from accidental workplace deaths and the consequences, to make people aware that having a safe and healthy workplace is only gained by good laws and strong enforcement, and that many more workers are at risk from negligent employers than the tabloid reports about over-the-top health and safety would have the general public believe."

LTB332/11 goes further to explain that:

"All of these deaths occurred in the last 15 years under a health and safety regime that the current government derides as over zealous, prescriptive, burdensome on employers and excessively enforced. FACK members only wish this was the true state of health and safety at work which they may have believed before reality hit them.

They now know to their cost that the picture of health and safety painted by Lord Young, David Cameron, the business lobby, and much of the tabloid press, exists only in their imagination.

They now also know that even where a worker is killed by their employers’ negligence, the punishment will not fit the crime in a way that provides any credible deterrent to other employers to obey the law, doesn’t stop some employers becoming repeat offenders, and some becoming serial killers as the HSE prosecutions database shows.

FACK members also learn that the employers pay none of the real costs and little of the financial costs, and that getting even minimal compensation can be very hard indeed for some families."

The LTB goes on to list some of the individual members of FACK and their heartbreaking stories of corporate killing and makes this salient point:

"Given what they know about the inadequacy of current law and enforcement, FACK members feel the government need to drastically improve enforcement, stop trusting employers to do the right things and stop allowing criminal employers to carry on killing, maiming and making workers ill."

The full LTB can be downloaded here

Order your copy of ’FACE the FACKs’ DVD for £10 inc P&P now!

Make cheques payable to GMHC with ‘For FACK DVD’ on back

This money will help to cover the cost of production AND support FACK’s work – you can donate more if you want!

Send Order to:-

Hazards Campaign,
Windrush Millennium Centre,
70 Alexandra Road,
Manchester M16 7WD

Tel 0161 636 7557

Email

FACK website

Source: CWU / FACK

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