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Protest march held to honour fallen workers  By
Trevor O ’Sullivan
A PROTEST march and rally took place last week to commemorate Workers
Memorial Day.
The event was organised by the Construction Safety Cam-paign (CSC) in
an effort to reduce the level of workplace fatalities.
Workers Memorial Day is commemorated globally every year on April 28.
The UN’s International Lab-our Organisation says work results
in: “One death every 15 seconds 6,000 a day.
“Work kills more people than wars. Work injures and mutilates as
well with almost 270million accidents recorded each year, 350,000 fatal.
“Many of these tragedies could be prevented and yet, 20 years after
the Bhopal disaster which killed 2,500 people and injured 200,000 in the
space of a few hours, the situation has scarcely improved.”
Speakers at the rally included Jennifer Deeney, wife of Kieron Deeney
who died on a construction site on Canary Wharf last year.
He fell 40 feet to his death when a hatch cover gave way at a Laing O’Rourke
construction site.
An inquest jury last February delivered a verdict of unlawful killing.
In a study published last week to mark Workers Memorial Day it was revealed
that the number of companies convicted of offences following the deaths
of construction workers had fallen sharply.
But the number of workers killed in construction accidents last year rose
by 25 per cent according to the report by building union UCATT.
The study shows prosecutions for deaths fell from 42 per cent to 11 per
cent between 1998 and 2004.
Tony O’Brien, who is national secretary of the Construction Safety
Campaign, criticised the lack of action on this important issue.
He said: “The shocking news of a 30 per cent increase in the number
of construction fatalities in 2006/7 must be a call to action for government.
“But this when tied with the news of the running down of our safety
police, the HSE and their enforcement activity shows the government just
don’t care.
“Things will not change until the government injects more money
into the HSE and strengthens their weak en-forcement activity; laws are
passed which jail negligent employers which the current corporate manslaughter
pro-posals fail to deliver; the courts set fines that are a real deterrent;
and workers are given stronger rights to defend themselves against dangerous
employers.” |
