UCATT Building Worker
New Year 2002

Treat me like an animal
by Rory O'Neill

About 15 years ago I attended a Health and Safety Commission press conference. Construction workers were dying at a rate of three every week; HSC itself said management was at fault for most of the deaths.

But when I suggested the guilty managers should be jailed - not one had ever been locked up for safety crimes at the time - top safety bosses Sir John Cullen and Sir John Rimington laughed. Apparently forensic science doesn't work on construction and other work sites; our jolly enforcers said it would be impossible to prove a manslaughter case under the law at the time.

All this in fact proved was how complacent our knight protectors really were. A handful of employers have since found themselves behind bars following workplace deaths and other safety offences, prosecuted under laws predating both Cullen and Rimington.

Of course, all of this took place under a Conservative government - many hoped the election of Labour would deliver a new kind of justice at work.

There were some grounds for optimism. Just before Labour's 1997 landslide, the party's then chief employment spokesperson and now government minister Ian McCartney MP said that under a Labour adminstration "sanctions against cowboy employers will be strengthened. These will include the crime of corporate manslaughter, designed to reduce the number of needless workplace deaths resulting from willfully negligent employers."

Since then Labour has won two elections and has found time to introduce many new laws including The Country and Rights of Way Act 2000, which allows for jail sentences of up to two years for wildlife crime.

No such luck for the humans. Five years and well over 1,000 workplace deaths later, the Labour government has still to deliver on corporate crime. Instead it is consulting us to death.

At least attitudes are changing outside of Westminster. Even the British Safety Council, famed for its black tie dinners and its "Sword of Honour" safety awards to its corporate pals, has become a vocal supporter of a corporate killing law.

And The Industrial Society - solid, respectable and business friendly - said in November that this year's 34 per cent rise in workplace deaths could be blamed squarely on "corporate complacency" with too many companies operating under the "fine words in filing cabinets" syndrome. It called for the introduction of corporate killing legislation "without delay" and for "directors to really make health and safety a boardroom issue."

Recent flesh and blood evidence shows how urgent the situation has become. Balfour Kirkpatrick had to pay out £260,000 this autumn after unfairly dismissing 80 electricians after they stood up for their safety rights. The sparks had objected, not unreasonably, to being required to work with electricity while wearing damp protective clothing.

And a November coroner's inquest heard site workers describe a Laing Homes job being "tidied-up" before safety inspectors swooped to investigate the death of hod carrier Christopher Supiya. His work mates walked out after the incident, one saying: "Conditions on the job were horrible. The whole place was in a right state and we were just waiting for an accident to happen." An HSE spokesperson saw things differently, telling the inquest: "We were satisfied the site had not been disturbed."

Legal protection from killer employers may come soon; it may be decades away. What is certain is that more workers will die and more employers will get away with murder because for now at least there is neither the law nor
the will to bring all the guilty to book. For now, you are best protected by good site organisation, and the best, more reliable evidence of bad practice is the evidence you collect yourself.

A new union initiative could make gathering this evidence a sight easier. On 13 November the TUC announced that union workplace safety reps should start to serve their own "final warnings" on employers who endanger the health and
safety of people at work.

TUC says its Union Inspection Notices (UIN) "help union reps to intervene before someone gets hurt" and should be served on employers where breaches of safety laws have been identified and the employer has failed to remedy them.

If the employer still refuses to deal with the hazards, the union rep can copy the Notice to the health and safety enforcing authorities. TUC says union rep-issued UINs could also be used as evidence in criminal prosecutions or civil compensation cases to prove that employers ignored warnings.

The idea is borrowed from the Australian unions. In Oz, "Provisional Improvement Notices", akin to UINs on steroids, allow workers to issue notices equivalent to the improvement and stop-the-job prohibition notices that only the official safety watchdog can issue here.

So, where now? The TUC says it will press for law changes to allow UINs to morph into Aussie style PINs. It is also campaigning with UCATT and other unions for greater accountability of company directors, and for realistic penalties including jail where workers are harmed as a result of their employer's neglect.

It is a mystery why the UK government is finding all this so difficult. Not only have Australian trade unionists got PINs will full legal clout, the government in the State of Victoria is also putting the final touches on a new "industrial manslaughter" law that could see negligent employers facing up to five years behind bars and their companies on the receiving end of a £1.8 million fine.

Back in the UK, it is best not to wait and hope. Grab hold of a Union Inspection Notice - you can get a copy free from the TUC - and serve notice on your employers that safety abuses have to end.

· To obtain a free copy of the TUC/Hazards Union Inspection Notice guide, including a ready-to-use UIN, send an SAE to TUC Publications, Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS. Tel: 020 7636 4030.

The latest issue of Hazards magazine includes a full report on why UINs are needed, together with a UIN and other resources, priced £3 to UCATT members, from Jawad Qasrawi at PO Box 199, Sheffield S1 4YL. Tel: 01142 678 936 or email: sub@hazards.org. The same materials are available free on the Hazards
website at: www.hazards.org/notices