LTB 332/11 FACE THE FACKS

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LTB No. 332/11 Ref N4/11 Date: 4 April 2011

To: All Branches

Dear Colleagues

“FACE the FACKS - The Human Face of Workplace Killing”

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.

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. 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.

Louise Adamson, whose brother Michael Adamson was electrocuted at work heard at the trial of her brother’s employer, evidence that, between 2004 and 2006, seven electricians died as a result of failure to ensure power switches were padlocked shut to prevent their inadvertent reconnection. The HSE inspector who investigated her brother’s death was unable to obtain examples of the padlocks from major suppliers. He was told this was because there was “no demand” for them from the industry. This padlocking is a fundamental safety procedure each electrician is taught during his or her apprenticeship, yet it was a procedure not being implemented by employers. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that self-regulation of health and safety by employers would result in more such opportunities for employers to cut corners, in turn putting even more lives of loved ones at great risk.

Linzi Herbertson, whose husband Andy fell off incorrectly assembled scaffolding, says that Lord Young’s offensive and callous statement that ’People occasionally get killed at work, it’s unfortunate but it's part of life’ is ignorant of the facts that most people killed by work are not killed in rare and unavoidable accidents, but like the members of our families, most were killed by employers breaking health and safety law. If Lord Young, David Cameron or any other member of the government condones such criminal behaviour that kills, mains and makes ill on such a vast scale, this is scandalous and we should all be very afraid of the lawless future. FACK urged the now departed Lord Young to watch the DVD ’FACE the FACKs: the human cost of workplace killing’ - he said he would! but we all know that the government's attacks on health and safety remain unmoved and the recent HSE and LA cuts plus plans to remove health and safety regulations demonstrate that this government will disregard the facts, the evidence and deaths caused by employers’ negligence at work.

Fack Founder members:
Linda Whelan: Son Craig Whelan (23) and fellow steeple jack Paul Wakefield were killed in an explosion when managers signed a permit to work using hot cutting gear to dismantle a metal chimney despite being advised this was too dangerous.

Dorothy and Douglas Wright: Son Mark Wright (37) was killed in an explosion when he was told by his manger to bale aerosol containers despite a risk assessment and the baler’s manual forbidding this.

Linzi Herbertson: Husband Andy Herbertson (29) was killed when he fell as he was dismantling a printing machine using incorrectly assembled scaffolding without training or protective measure.

Bet and Mick Murphy: Son Lewis Murphy (17) was killed in an explosion when transferring petrol and diesel to a waste tank and the garage owner had no safe working procedures.

Louise Taggart: Brother Michael Adamson (26) was electrocuted when a live wire had not been isolated but was marked out of use.

Paul and Dawn Adams: Son Samuel Adams (6) was killed at a shopping centre by an 18 stone barrier that was designed without any restraining measures.

Mike and Lynne Hutin: Son Andrew Hutin (20) was killed with colleagues when a faulty blast furnace blew up.

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
mail@gmhazards.org.uk http://www.fack.org.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Yours Sincerely

Dave Joyce
National Health, Safety & Environment Officer