7th June 2013
Save Our Safety
Lobby of Parliament on 11th June
Organised by UCATT and UNITE (1)
11am photo call on College Green, Houses of Parliament
Post Lobby Meeting in Committee Room 14,  1pm to 3pm

UCATT and UNITE have called this lobby of Parliament at a time when the government is dismantling one of our fundamental human rights: the right to safe and healthy work (2)

“Don’t be fooled by government lies on health and safety, it isn’t a joke and isn’t a burden, an albatross or a millstone round employers necks, but lack of it is a massive burden on all of us!”  said Linda Whelan, founder member of Families Against Corporate Killers, who is speaking at the meeting. She added:

“By cutting health and safety regulations, inspections and inspectors, the government is putting the lives and safety of so many workers at risk. This is  true not only in construction but also in workplaces that they have wrongly classified as ‘low risk’ such as quarries, farming, docks, the whole of the manufacturing sector, road and air transport, the public sector and more!  FACK knows that health and safety isn’t a joke, it’s about life and death. But many people do not realise that, until someone they love goes to work and never comes home. People aren’t killed because of too much regulation and enforcement, but because of not enough! The only people who benefit from removing laws and scrutiny are unscrupulous employers. Employers will not necessarily look after workers health, safety and welfare unless the law says they have to, and inspectors check-up to make sure they do. Many people laugh about health and safety and think getting rid of it will be good for us all.  This is not true. We want the public and MPs to learn from our bitter experience that health and safety is not meaningless red tape but a vital safety net that protects all the people you love at work. We don’t want you crying later when it’s gone.

“Deaths at work will only increase if we let Cameron get away with trashing health and safety. Instead of cuts to the regulation, enforcement and inspection system, the government should value and respecting workers and strengthening their protection at work. The government is lying about the burden on business, lack of health and safety is a massive burden on us, in heartache and lifelong loss, but it also cost the public purse far more than good health and safety does.(3)

FACK wants to make sure a message goes out loud and clear to negligent employers that if you put someone’s life or safety at risk, then the punishment will fit the crime.
No-one voted for this government so they could help bad employers kill us in our work place. On behalf of FACK, my message to the government today is:

Regulations don’t  kill jobs but lack of regulation does kills workers,  so ‘Stop deregulating, you are killing us’“

For more information contact FACK 0161 636 7557 or 079298 00240; Linda Whelan 07919334793

Notes for editors

1. For information on the Save Our Safety Lobby see UNITE and UCATT websites:

http://www.unitetheunion.org/campaigning/events/saveoursafety/ ;
https://www.ucatt.org.uk/saveoursafety.html

2. We Didn’t Vote to Die at Work Campaign : Stop it You’re KiIling us! leaflet summarizing government attacks, lies and the truth: http://gmhazards.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/updated-wdvtdaw-leaflet-september-2012.pdf

Hazards Magazine:  http://www.hazards.org/votetodie
Hazards Magazine http://www.hazards.org/lowlife

3. Cost of the harm caused by poor workplace health and safety

The HSE records the costs of poor health and safety i.e. deaths, injuries and illnesses (over 70% caused by poor management according to the HSE) as £13.4 billion per year, but this does not include the long latency illnesses like cancers. Each incident fatality costs £1.5 million and each occupational cancer costs £2.5 million (DEFRA costing). So even taking HSE’s gross under estimate of 8,000 work cancer deaths per year would add £20 billion to this total making it nearer £40 billion per year.  Taking Hazards figures would make it nearer £60 billion.

Of this cost, according to the HSE, individuals and families pay 55%, the state – us, tax payers!- pay 24%, and employers whose criminal negligence caused the harm, pay only 22%
See HSE Annual Statistics Report  2011/12: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/overall/hssh1112.pdf

Who bears the burden? We do: Real Burdens:http://www.hazards.org/images/h112laurieswift1200px.jpg

FACK was established in July 2006, by and for families of people killed by the gross negligence of business employers, see www.fack.org.uk .

Founder Members of FACK:
Dawn and Paul Adams – son Samuel Adams aged 6 killed at Trafford Centre,10th October 1998
Linzi Herbertson -husband Andrew Herbertson 29, killed at work in January 1998
Mike and Lynne Hutin – son Andrew Hutin 20, killed at work on 8th Nov 2001
Mick & Bet Murphy – son Lewis Murphy 18, killed at work on 21st February 2004
Louise Taggart – brother Michael Adamson 26, killed at work on 4th August 2005
Linda Whelan – son Craig Whelan 23, (and Paul Wakefield) killed at work on 23rd May 2002
Dorothy & Douglas Wright – son Mark Wright 37, killed at work on 13th April 2005

See http://www.fack.org.uk/aboutus  for the stories above.

Tackling occupational cancer should mean preventing it, not taking a ‘3 monkeys’ approach

Photo-op 8.30am Thursday 14th March, British Library, Gate No 5 Midland Road.

Campaigners against occupational and environmental cancer will hold a photo op outside the British Library, HSE conference on Tackling Occupational Diseases.  Women’s work-cancer is almost totally ignored by the HSE so campaigners will leave bras behind as a protest against the denial, delay and dithering that will kill more women from breast cancer especially.

Government, employers and the Health and Safety Executive are consigning thousands of workers to occupational cancer by their ‘3 monkeys’ approach to ‘tackling’ occupational disease.  Occupational cancer kills up to 18,000 men and women each year (1) yet action on prevention has been side-lined in favour of yet more research, and still work-related cancer in women is virtually ignored condemning more women to suffer and die.

HSE’s old fashioned, outdated approaches miss many modern workplace risks but especially ignore women’s cancers, specifically breast cancer, as researchers have recently shown (2, 3).  Campaigners will reinforce this point by leaving their bras outside the British Library as a protest against this approach.

“The Hazards Campaign has accused the HSE of dithering, denying and delaying over occupational cancer, and employers and government are also guilty of doing almost nothing on prevention for all work-cancers.  But this ‘3 monkeys’ approach is especially deadly for work-related cancer in women which has been completely ignored, under-researched and so much less likely to be targeted for preventative action.”  Said Hilda Palmer of the Hazards Campaign.

 “Occupational and environmental breast cancer is largely preventable and we hope this strategic meeting organised by the HSE will call for that.  For female cancers, specifically breast cancer, not to act now in a precautionary way, applying existing knowledge to reduce the occupational and environmental risk factors could be viewed as an act of wilful neglect.”  Said Helen Lynn from the Alliance for Cancer Prevention.

Traditional approaches to try and regulate the amount of exposure to certain chemicals in occupational and environmental settings are unworkable in light of what we know about chemicals which interfere with our endocrine systems (the body’s messenger system).  These endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are intrinsically linked with cancer and act singularly and in combination to increase the risk of breast and other cancers.

WHO estimates that as much as 24% of human diseases and disorders are at least partly due to environmental factors including chemical exposures. The report states: “Many endocrine diseases and disorders are on the rise and the speed at which they are increasing rules out genetic factors as the sole plausible explanation” (4)

Recent research highlighting excesses of breast cancer in occupations such as agricultural, automotive plastics, and food canning industries found women workers had elevated breast cancer risk, up to 5 times higher than the controls in certain sectors such as automotive plastics (3)

And yet another paper on the issue stated: “Primary prevention of cancer of environmental and occupational origin reduces cancer incidence and mortality, and is highly cost effective; in fact, it is not just socially beneficial because it reduces medical and other costs, but because it avoids many human beings suffering from cancer.” (5)

The United Steelworkers union in the US has acted immediately on this research by alerting their members and calling for substitution, chemical law reform and health and safety improvements.(6)

Yet the UK cancer establishment continued to assure women there is no need to worry and falls back on the archaic and limited risk reduction strategy of better diet, more exercise and limiting alcohol. (7)
Hilda Palmer of the Hazards campaign says: “We want this HSE meeting to make publicly explicit the extent, and preventable nature, of all occupational cancers; that prevention must be prioritised by government, employers and the HSE; that exposure to all cancer risks must be eliminated or reduced to as low a level as possible, and that women’s cancer risks must now be targeted for prevention”

Helen Lynn. Alliance for Cancer Prevention 07960033687
www.allianceforcancerprevention.org.uk

Hilda Palmer. Hazards Campaign: 079298 00240
www.hazardscampaign.org.uk

Notes to Editor:
1. Burying the evidence, Hazards Magazine.
2.  This man knows all about cancer Article on the work of Simon Pickvance. Hazards 117, Rory O’Neill
3.  J. T. Brophy et al., Breast Cancer Risk in Relation to Occupations with Exposure to Carcinogens and Endocrine Disruptors: A Canadian Case-Control Study, Environmental Health 11(87) (2012): 1-17, doi: 10.1186/1476-069X-11-87
4.  WHO/UNEP report on the State of the Science for Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals Report.
5.  Espina C, Porta M, et al. Environmental and Occupational Interventions for Primary Prevention of Cancer: A Cross-Sectorial Policy Framework. Environ Health Perspect. Advanced publication here
6.  United Steelworkers Hazards Alert on occupational breast cancer
7.  Does your job increase your breast cancer risk? Breakthrough comments on the recent researchpublished in Canada that links occupation to an increased risk of developing breast cancer. Here

For more information contact:
Hazards Campaign – 0161 636 7557