news release
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no embargo - 4 September 2013 ( Back to news releases) FACK finds the chancellors’ plans to offer ‘tribute to offshore oil workers’ singularly inappropriate. After an yet another incident that claimed the lives of offshore workers, Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK) finds the chancellors’ plans to offer ‘tribute to offshore oil workers’ singularly inappropriate. It is insulting for the chancellor of a government so hostile to the protection of workers’ lives and health, both offshore and onshore, to pay tribute while acting to reduce workers safety by mounting a massive slash and burn operation ever since it took office against occupational health and safety laws and their enforcement, and driving back safety gains won by workers and their unions over the past century. Enough is enough, the most fitting and meaningful tribute from the chancellor and this government to all workers killed by work, and especially to George Allison, Sarah Darnley, Gary McCrossan and Duncan Munro killed in the fifth Puma helicopter crash in 4 years, would be to reverse the cuts to HSE and Local Authority enforcement, stop all attacks on health and safety based on the utter lies about ‘burden on business’, and make workers’ lives and health the top priority in economic recovery. No-one should risk their life to earn a living and no family should live in fear that this may happen. Every day an estimated 4 people are killed in work-related incidents and up to 140 die from work-related illness and injury, almost every one of which is completely preventable, should never have happened, and would not happen if workers lives were given priority over profits. Hilda Palmer Acting Chair of National Hazards Campaign
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