Call for action following another Corus death

“Following yet another worker death on a Corus site we ask again – When will senior directors of companies such as Corus be held personally accountable for their serial killing and injuring workers?”

Following the news of another death at Corus, Scunthorpe on Saturday, which itself follows the death there in April of 26 year old Thomas Standerline – The Hazards Campaign again asks: “When will senior directors of companies such as Corus be held personally accountable for their serial killing and injuring workers? We also want to know what plans Lord Young and David Cameron will announce to stop this ever happening again in their forthcoming review of health and safety?”

The Hazards Campaign says given the history of repeated criminality of the company (see below) and the deadly nature of their crimes – why hasn’t any senior director been called to account in the courts for causing all this death, disability and injury?

Corus’s abysmal health and safety record is illustrated by the 16 separate entries in the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE’s) prosecutions database which relate to death and injury, AND……… the 24 separate entries in the HSE’s notices database, including many stop work notices, since 2001. These incidents include the Port Talbot furnace explosion where Stephen Galsworthy, 25, Andrew Hutin, 20, and Len Radford, 53 were all killed in 2001.

The Hazards Campaign calls upon the government and other parties to explain where they stand on this issue of the failure of the existing legal system to change the behaviour of a company,  what they will do about it and why those individuals who ran this deadly company at the time have not been personally called to answer in court.

The Hazards Campaign believes the evidence shows that directors of companies with a similar record will get away with it too, unless a positive legal duty to be responsible for the health and safety of their organisation is imposed on all directors.

Corus has faced several ‘large fines’ for killing and injuring workers.  While the fine of £1.3 million, plus £1.7 million costs imposed on Corus in December 2006 for the killing of three workers in the Port Talbot furnace explosion, was heralded as exemplary, may seem large, it has not stopped them from committing more offences and injuring and killing more workers. It should also be noted that after that large fine Corus took delivery of a new £75 million blast furnace courtesy of their insurance.  Fines  may look large but are a drop in the ocean of the company’s turnover and profits and act as no real deterrent as Corus has shown. Again and again.

The Hazards Campaign says company directors and employers will not give due regard to preventing workplace death, disability, injury and ill-health until they are held personally liable.

Contacts:
Mick Holder – 020 8223 0712
Hilda Palmer – 0161 636 7557

Hazards Campaign:
http://www.hazardscampaign.org.uk/

 

Corus’s recent prosecution history:

April 2010 – Corus (UK) Ltd fined £240,000 after a lorry driver Ross Beddow was crushed to death at its site in Staffordshire.

March 2010 – Corus UK Ltd fined £10,000 following an explosion in a 75-metre-tall steel chimney in Scunthorpe.

March 2010 – Corus UK Ltd fined £100,000 after a worker at Rotherham luckily escaped with only minor injuries after the crane he was operating overturned.

March 2010 – Corus UK Limited, trading as Corus Special Profiles, fined £5,000 after a worker was injured while clearing a jam in the production line at a factory in Skinningrove, East Cleveland.

Sept 2008 – Corus UK Ltd, trading as Corus Tubes in Hartlepool, was fined £15,000 after worker was hit by falling beam.

April 2008 – Corus UK Ltd fined £170,000 after Shane Eastwood was killed when he was crushed while working at Rotherham.

Feb 2008 – Corus UK Ltd, trading as Corus Packaging Plus fined £250,000 following the death of Francis Coles in Llanelli.

Aug 2007 – Corus UK Ltd fined £125,000 after an employee received life-threatening burns at their Appleby site.

And that’s not all…….There’s loads more prosecutions of Corus UK Ltd companies recorded on the HSE enforcement databases here:

http://www.hse.gov.uk/enforce/prosecutions.htm

For even more information see:

http://www.hazards.org/corus/

Leave a Reply

Your e-mail address will not be published. Required fields are marked *