Grieving for a dead partner who never got to meet his son: Want to know about "Burdens"?

Mum of two Laurie Swift 27 lost her partner Alan Winters, crushed to death at work. The 28 year old crane driver was killed just 6 weeks before the birth of his son Alan Jr.   The Tory/Coalition want to slash and burn basic health & safety legislation and essential regulation. For further details check out Hazards

"Union buster" Tory minister of Health & Safety?

I came home tonight to find that the latest publication of Labour Research Department “Health and Safety Law 2010” had been delivered.

Every active trade union safety rep needs to have this guide to hand.

I note that it describes (p3) the appointment of Chris Grayling as Health & Safety minister as “not good news for trade unions or workers. The safety campaign group Hazards has reported that he was a former director at Burson-Marsteller” and says that this company is well known as one of the more prominent “union busting firms”.

No real surprise - typical Tory, but we will have to work with them somehow.

I suppose all of those who ranted that there is no difference between a Labour Government and the Tories are really proud of themselves now.

"We didn't Vote to Die at Work"

I've just joined this health and safety Facebook group set up by Hazards.

This is what it is about...'We didn't vote to die at work' is the Hazards Campaign's response to the Con-Dem government attacks on workplace safety and health. We need to fight against: deregulation; the misrepresentation of health and safety as silly red tape instead of our human right; the lie that health and safety is a burden on business; and cuts in enforcement that are proposed by the new coalition government.

The coalition is moving on many fronts, including Lord Young's review of health and safety, Vince Cable's deregulatory review of all regulation, Nick Clegg's requests to name a law to be cut, and the overall massive cuts in budgets which will reduce funding for the enforcement agencies - the HSE, local authorities, the rail regulator and others. The Health Protection Agency, which covers many occupation-related issues like radiation exposure and pandemics, has already gone. Health and safety is not a burden on business. Good health and safety pays for itself. When it comes to poor health and safety, business does not face so significant a burden - because business externalises the cost onto us all, paying less than 25 per cent of the costs arising from work-related deaths, diseases and injuries. Instead, it engages in cost shifting to the victims, their families, the public purse and the community as a whole".