Liability / Corporate Responsibility

In 2002, average annual pay of Britain's top bosses was £1.5 million. The average fine for workplace safety offences was £12,194. Do the maths. Small fines alone are not an adequate deterrent for Britain's workplace safety criminals.

The vast majority all the workplace deaths and serious injuries are preventable and due to management failures. When employers fail to identify hazards, assess risks and develop safe systems of work putting people at risk of death, debilitating illness or serious injury, they should be held to account.

Real corporate accountability requires employers be committed to protecting the health of their workforce, not just the wealth of their directors and shareholders.

In order to achieve this, trade unions and the TUC have called upon the government to get businesses and undertakings held accountable for the corporate killing, maiming and making people ill, devastating families and costing the whole country billions upon billions yearly.

If you hurt people in the workplace it should be treated with the same seriousness as incidents outside the workplace. TUC wants a corporate killing law to ensure the most deadly employers are brought to account.

Links.

The Centre for Corporate Accountability:

Hazards deadly business webpages:

TGWU/CCA draft corporate manslaughter Bill

Corporate accountability and real corporate responsibility: A TUC briefing by Hilda Palmer

The most recent documents available on this subject are:

Bill calls for safety duties on directors
A Labour MP is pressing for a new law to place legally binding, explicit safety duties on company directors.
PDF version available for download
29 January 2010

The case for Directors Duties
This briefing outlines the TUC's case for a legal duty on directors and calls on the government to change the law to ensure that all directors are legally responsible for health and safety failings.
15 December 2009

Manslaughter fines could be smaller
A proposal that fines for corporate manslaughter should be related to a firm's turnover has been rejected by the Sentencing Guidelines Council (SGC).
PDF version available for download
6 November 2009

First charges under Corporate Manslaughter Law
For the first time charges have been brought under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homocide Act 2007.
PDF version available for download
1 May 2009

Homicide charges call after tug tragedy
Clydeport should face culpable homicide charges relating to the deaths of three tug crew, a top union official has said.
PDF version available for download
3 October 2008

Call to link to safety fines to share price
A simple change in the law to vary the powers open to Scottish judges in cases of death or injury at work could dramatically change the climate of corporate responsibility, a member of the Scottish parliament has said.
PDF version available for download
29 August 2008

Older documents - 105

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