date: 24 March 2003

embargo: For immediate use

International Workers’ Memorial Day

Monday, 28 April 2003


Workers' Memorial Day - Take action now!

by Hilda Palmer, Greater Manchester Hazards Centre (TUC Co-ordinator for Workers’ Memorial Day)

Workers and trade unionists across the world mark 28 April as a day to

  • Remember the Dead - the huge number of people killed in incidents at work and by occupational illnesses like cancer, lung, heart and asbestos related disease each year; and

  • Fight for the Living. We fight for the living by campaigning for better health and safety at work and the prevention of death, injury and disease through real partnership with employers, increased rights for trade union safety reps, strict enforcement, serious fines and imprisonment for breaking health and safety laws.

This year world wide trade unions are using International Workers Memorial Day (1) to call for 'Real corporate social responsibility, and corporate accountability for workers' health and safety'.

When employers in any organisation, private or public, kill, injure or make ill, a worker or member of the public, they should be thoroughly investigated. If found to be negligent or breaking health and safety law, then they should be treated like any other lawbreakers: and held to account by the courts. Trade unions want employers to practice real corporate social responsibility which means making health and safety a top priority by involving and consulting workers and safety reps. Tougher punishments - higher fines, imprisonment - deter bad practices and reward good employers by cracking down on cowboys. Deaths and serious injuries at work have not gone down significantly in recent years while ill health caused by work is sky rocketing (2).

Death and destruction stalk our workplaces every day. The number of people killed by their work across the world is astonishing and far greater than those killed by war, famine or AIDS, year after year after year. More people are killed in Britain by asbestos than on the roads.

The International Labour Organisation says that, worldwide:

  • Over 2 million are killed by work each year;

  • Work kills more than twice as many people as warfare (650,000);

  • Work kills more people than alcohol and drug use together;

  • The resulting loss in GDP is 20 times greater than all official development assistance to developing countries (3).

The Health and Safety Executive says that in Great Britain last year:

  • 249 workers were killed in incidents at work and 384 members of the public;

  • An estimated 10,000 people died due to occupational illnesses - 4,000 due to asbestos alone;

  • The cost of health and safety failures in G.B. is over £18 billion each year (4).

As at least 70% of the deaths and injuries in Britain and 50% world wide, are the result of employers failure to manage health and safety properly. They could and should have been prevented.

2003 Workers Memorial Day Demands

British trade unions want the government to act now to honour their promises and introduce the laws which will make corporate bodies accountable:

  • a new law against corporate killing;

  • a legal duty on directors;

  • higher fines, innovative penalties and wider powers for courts to send grossly negligent employers to prison;

  • abolition of crown and parliamentary immunity which prevent organisations operated by the crown like the Royal Mint from being prosecuted for health and safety offences;

  • safety reps in more workplaces with more influence, so they can promote better health and safety standards;

  • more funding for HSE and local authority health and safety inspectors;

  • victims of employers’ negligence - families of those killed, the injured and those made ill, often terminally, by work - to be acknowledged as victims of crime and included in the Victims’ Charter.

Corporate health and safety crime -the wrong kind of crime?

Trade unions want employers to prevent deaths injuries and illness, and welcomed the Health and Safety Commission's 'Revitalising Health and Safety' ten year plan with its targets to reduce the incidence rate of fatal and major injuries by 10% by 2010 (5). Unions have signed up to partnerships with employers and the HSE and are developing strategies to meet the targets in different industrial sectors. However, the legislative reforms necessary to achieve the Revitalising targets, such as corporate killing law and a specific health and safety duty on employers, have not yet happened. So employers killing or injuring workers and members of the public are still seen as lesser crimes.

Imprisonment is accepted as an appropriate punishment and deterrent in most other forms of crime. But when it comes to employers' negligence killing, maiming and making ill, the courts are more lenient: fines are way too low and often derisory, and imprisonment is not available for most health and safety breaches.

In the 21st Century we also have the anachronism of Crown immunity meaning that the Royal Mint could not be prosecuted for killing a worker in 2001, even though the HSE confirms that any other employer would have been (6). People killed or injured by criminal acts of their employers are not treated as victims of crime. Neither they nor their families are given support or help by Victims Support nor are they accorded a voice in the criminal justice system as they are excluded from the Home Office Victims’ Charter.

Partnership has potential. There is a lot of evidence that worker involvement is crucial to improving health and safety and that trade unions are the most effective way to achieve this involvement. Workplaces with trade union safety reps and full consultation have half the number of major accidents as workplaces without (7).

Our long-term goal must be a safety rep for every workplace either by organising and recruitment or through roving safety reps and for all safety reps to have the right to serve Provisional Improvement Notices when their employers break the law.

WMD activities

All over Britain, families of those killed, trade unions, trades union councils, victims support groups and activists, will be organising events. Some will concentrate on 'Remembering the Dead' by lighting candles, placing wreaths and holding services in churches or at previously planted trees, plaques and benches.

Amicus clergy and church workers are consolidating their formal recognition of WMD last year by distributing worship material for services on the preceding Sunday and there will be services in Ely and Birmingham Cathedrals and at the Crooked Spire church in Chesterfield.

The TUC Executive Committee will mark the day, we hope to have motions in Parliament, flags will be lowered where trade unions have persuaded their local council, and a minute's silence will be observed at many workplaces, including some of the most dangerous - building sites. Many thousands will wear the purple forget-me-knot ribbon, the emblem of WMD in Britain.

Some groups will take direct action and in many workplaces, trade unions will focus on 'Fighting for the Living' by holding meetings on a specific health and safety topic, carrying out an inspection supported by UNISON, or doing some Body or Risk Mapping.

Further information

Notes:

1. WMD started by Canadian Union of Public Employees in 1985, recognised in USA since 1989, adopted by ICFTU and ILO; commemorated in almost 100 countries worldwide. ILO made it an official day in UN calendar in 2002. Brought to the UK in 1992 by Hazards Campaign, adopted by trade unions, Scottish TUC, TUC and HSC/E.

2. 'Health and Safety Targets: How are we doing?' A supplement to the HSC Annual Report and HSC/E Accounts 2001/02 www.hse.gov.uk

3. International Labour Organisation statistics www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/safework/accidis/index.htm

4. HSE statistics www.hse.gov.uk/statistics

5. Revitalising H&S targets:

§ reduce No. of days lost per 100,0000 workers from work-related injury and ill-health by 30% by 2010;

§ reduce the incidence rate of fatal and major injury accidents by 10% by 2010;

§ reduce the incidence of work-related ill-health by 20% by 2010;

§ achieve half the improvement by 2004

6. Hazards 80 page 6: John Wynne killed by a furnace falling on him at Royal Mint in Llantrisant. June 2001 www.hazards.org

7. 'Unions, safety committees and workplace injuries' by Barry Reilly, Peirella Paci and Peter Hall in British Journal of Industrial Relations 33.2, June 1992 plus more research on Unions Safety Effect in Hazards 78 pages 4-5 www.hazards.org

8. Worker participation in health and safety: 'A review of Australian provision for worker health and safety representation' by Sarah Page, HSE July 2002 www.hse.gov.uk/workers/index.htm

Press release (1,500 words) issued 23 Mar 2003

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