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Companies ‘reckless’ on safety

Those who kill people at work continue to have special privileges simply because the victims are workers and the perpetrators are engaged in profit making enterprises’, claims a new report from the Workers’ Educational Association.

It calls for a criminal police investigation into the conduct of senior management after all workplace deaths and for changes in the law to create a new offence allowing a company to be prosecuted for ‘recklessly causing the death of a person’.

The report, Deaths at work: accidents or corporate crime?, argues that the present system of investigation and prosecution has allowed companies and their senior officials to escape the reach of the criminal law. In effect, it says, workplace deaths have been decriminalised. The police are involved only to the extent of ruling out foul play, and all subsequent investigation is in the hands of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which is concerned with specific breaches of health and safety law.

But the HSE’s approach is inadequate and is not directed towards uncovering evidence of a company ‘recklessly causing the death of a person’, says the report. ‘It is almost unheard of for a case to be referred by the HSE to the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration of manslaughter liability.’

David Bergman, the author of the report, told healthmatters: ‘We are calling for special units to be set up in the police forces to investigate workplace deaths as “manslaughter” and occupational injury as “grievous bodily harm”.

’’Of course prevention is the key’, he said, ‘but the criminal justice system has an important part to play — otherwise senior company officials will never be induced to make safety an important issue.’

Responding to the criticism of the HSE made by the report, David Eves, Deputy Director General of the HSE, said: ‘We investigate thoroughly every workplace fatality. Of course, we do not always believe that there has been negligence and often we have to accept that the available evidence will not stand up in court. We do, in fact, prosecute individuals whenever we think a case will stick’.

But the report cites HSE figures showing that, of 623 workplace deaths in 1989-90, less than one percent resulted in the prosecution of an individual manager or director. The average fine imposed on a company following a death at work was less than £2,000.