Shocking toll
Those root causes include failures by some employers across the UK to protect employees with basic health and safety standards and working conditions; failures of government to ensure effective and properly resourced health and safety agencies and effective health and safety laws; failures of the Health and Safety Executive over many years to maintain an effective level of law enforcement; failures of courts to thoroughly investigate the financial background of employers who commit such crimes to ensure financial penalties are effective.
Why have these failures not been fully addressed and when will they be? We tend to lose sight of the enormous toll taken each year – tens of thousands of lives lost – due to poor workplace health and safety conditions and regulation.
These are not trivial but shocking figures.
Professor Andrew Watterson
University of Stirling
Jim McCourt
University of Stirling
Dr Dave Whyte
University of Liverpool
(members of the ICL Stockline Study Group)