Safety champion’s work rights alert
A WILLINGTON woman whose steeplejack son was killed by a fireball is urging all employees to know their rights and not ignore concerns over safety.
After the death of 23-year-old Craig Whelan in 2002, his mother Linda started Families Against Corporate Killers (Fack) to tackle negligence by employers which leads to the injuries or deaths of their workers.
Last week, Ms Whelan spoke about her son’s death at the Learning skills Council’s (LSC) conference on work place safety in Gateshead.
She said he and colleague Paul Wakefield were killed by a fireball in an industrial chimney in Bolton they were demolishing.
She said he was using hot cutting equipment which had sparked flammable residue in the chimney. Ms Whelan said the pair had not been told what they were doing was dangerous despite their employers knowing that their method posed a real risk of causing an explosion.
She said: “Craig was killed at work, not because he was negligent but because his employers cut corners. My son is one of hundreds of young people who have been killed or injured in the work place.
“Craig was a conscientious worker, who took health and safety very seriously and in fact was about to leave his job, as he was unhappy with the way things were handled by his employers.
“When I was told he had been killed and how he had died, in a fireball inside a chimney, my heart broke. How could any mother face hearing her son had died in such a terrible way?
“It is important that all employees are given training about all aspects of health and safety and that this training should start before they leave school.
“They should be informed of the importance of their safety and the safety of others; their rights to a safe and healthy workplace in law, their employer’s duties and their own responsibilities; they should be enabled to ask relevant questions especially if they feel someone is at risk, and enabled to understand risk assessments and question them if they are have any concerns. They must know before they go to work where they can go to get help if they are worried about the safety of their work.
“If you do have any concerns then do not ignore them but act, speak out, report your concerns before someone is hurt.”
Pre-recession figures show that one person aged between 16 and 24 was killed at work every 12 weeks, one injured every 12 minutes and one seriously injured every 40 minutes.