The killing of 186 British soldiers in Afghanistan is, rightly, producing huge repercussions in foreign and defence policy. So why has the killing of 229 people last year, when they were doing nothing other than working for their employer and for their country, passed without mention? That is shameful when the official Health and Safety Executive admits that over 70% of major injuries and deaths in the workplace are due to management failures and therefore could have, and should have, been prevented. All deaths are a tragedy for the family involved, but a death at work is almost always very traumatic, made even more so when the employers have behaved carelessly, negligently or criminally and yet seem to escape scot-free or at least not be subject to appropriate penalties. So why do we not take far more seriously this large annual swath of avoidable killing, especially when the true figures are far higher than the official statistics ever admit to?

The true figures for killing at work are under-stated on several grounds. First, they exclude the largest cause of work-related deaths, not only road traffic accidents which involve people driving as part of their work, but many other workers too such as the 16 oil rig workers and pilots who were killed recently in the helicopter crash in the North Sea. The total in this category is about 1,000 a year. Further, 95 members of the public were killed in work-related incidents, but they too are wrongly excluded from the figures. In addition, and most importantly, those killed by occupational illnesses are also left out of the tally. The number who die from occupational cancers is about 6,000 a year, and from all occupational illnesses at least 20-30,000 a year, though some authorities have put the figure as high as up to 50,000 a year. When those who die from illnesses contracted at work are included, as they must be, the total killed each year worldwide by work, either in incidents or by occupational illness, now stands at over 2 million – more than are killed by wars each year!
This is bad enough, but the treatment of families traumatised by a sudden and utterly unexpected death is almost worse. When somebody is killed at work, they are never the only victims. Families in cases of work-related death aren’t treated as victims of crime, so Victims Support doesn’t help. The Protocol of Work-Related Death operates unevenly, so that many families don’t get a family liaison officer, and there is no legal aid for families to ensure the full facts come out during the investigation, inquest and trial. The tiny fines, the almost total lack of individual accountability indicated by the small number of section 37 manslaughter or corporate manslaughter charges leave families feeling utterly bereft of justice. There have only ever been 22 prison and 6 suspended sentences for employers found guilty in worker death cases, compared to 38 prison and 51 suspended sentences for animal cruelty in 2006 alone!
One recent example suffices. NW Aerosols was tried for breaches of H&S offences in June 2008 after killing Christopher Knoop and injuring 3 other men in a negligently caused fireball. The HSE took a case against the company, which had gone into liquidation, but not against the 3 individual directors who made the decisions. Not one of them ever turned up in court or was in the dock. The company was found guilty and fined £1each for t H&S offences and £1 costs. After the case Christopher Knoop’s 7-year old nephew said: “Does this mean that they killed Uncle Chris for £3?” Good question. When are we going to start treating criminal negligence that leads to a worker’s death more seriously than cruelty to animals, unforgiveable as that is?

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