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28th April 2009

Involving workers saves lives

Worker killed on construction site

The catalogue of health and safety failures which led to the horrific death of a young man on a construction site were typical of the disregard many employers show for their workers lives, leading trade union lawyers Thompsons has warned.

On International Workers Memorial Day (IWMD) Thompsons says too many firms still operate with visible but superficial health and safety systems which they fail to implement and involve their workforce in.

The firm has called on the Health and Safety Executive to demand that firms work with workplace health and safety representatives and to significantly increase the number of inspections of construction and other workplaces to ensure that health and safety systems are more than just paper policies.

Catalogue of Health and Safety Failures

Steven Allen, from Keighley in West Yorkshire, was killed in March 2007 when a mechanical grab, known as a scissor grab, closed on his head.

The 23-year-old had been trying to free cement pallets from the grab during the construction of a waste recycling plant in Bradford by the Skipton-based construction firm JN Bentley.

Not only should the grab have not been used for moving pallets, but the mechanism that should have prevented it closing was defective.

Nearly every section of the instruction manual had been breached, the workforce had not been trained in the grab's use and the driver's license had expired.

An inquest into Steven's death concluded it was an accident. The Health and Safety Executive has still to decide whether to prosecute the JN Bentley directors.

Unionised workplaces safer workplaces

Mick Antoniw, who acts for Steven's family, said:

"Steven's employer did not recognise trade unions and had never involved the workforce in health and safety. It failed to take the most basic of steps that would have prevented Steven's death.

"Had the accident happened since the Corporate Manslaughter Act became law, we would have been able to prosecute Steven's employers for corporate manslaughter. But as it is the family are reliant on the HSE taking action.

"The HSE has admitted that improvements in workplace health and safety have stopped and recently consulted on a new strategy. But it is a fact that unionised workplaces are safer workplaces and one of the most effective things the HSE can do to stop people dying at work is to make companies involve their workforce and to get tough on the health and safety offenders."

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