Workers Memorial Day 2005 Update - UNISON poster and local events

Send an email (m.carley@unison.co.uk) or fax (020 7551 1461) quoting stock no 1288 and including the following details: how many you would like, your name, address, and telephone number; plus UNISON branch and branch number.

• On a local level UNISON is organising many events to remember the dead and fight for the living on (WMD). Here are just a few examples:
• On 28 April Tower Hamlets UNISON is holding a WMD meeting outside the local Town Hall. Invitees include: workers, the Mayor, and a number of local councillors and MPs. There will be a minutes silence, speakers, and a wreath laying ceremony.
• A WMD service will be held at Chapel of Christ the King, Meeting Point House, Telford on Wednesday 27 April, from 12:45pm to 1:15pm. Take sandwiches if this is your lunch time. All faiths are warmly welcome. There will be a minutes silence and a roll call. For further information contact UNISON member John Battye at: john.battye@telford.gov.uk or tel: 07976 100 248.
• Doncaster UNISON Branch are holding a memorial service on WMD at St. George's Doncaster Minster. The Mayor will be attending.
• Scotland Region has produced a WMD calendar for April and a poster featuring memorials for workers deaths. Both are available to branches in Scotland.
• A special service will take place at 6pm on WMD at St Peter's in Nottingham. Organised with UNISON East Midlands Region, local union reps will be attending. An appeal is also being launched to raise £25,000 for a newly engraved window for this important city centre church as a permanent memorial to those killed at work. The window will incorporate the words Remember the Dead, Fight for the Living and the purple ribbon. For more information contact: Revd David McCoulough by phone on 0115 948 3658 or by email at office@stpetersnottingham.org
• Numerous activities are taking place in the Wales/Cymru region including: the presentation of memorial books from local UNISON branches to local churches, church commemoration services, the dedication of trees and benches, and developing school childrens understanding of health and safety through presentations and getting them to produce posters for the Day.
• UNISON's national health conference will be holding a minute's silence for WMD, along with a presentation, and delegates will be supplied with the WMD ribbon to wear.
• Staff in UNISON's national office will be supplied with the WMD ribbon to wear during the week of and on WMD, and will be asked to raise awareness during the course of their work.

For further information on WMD have a look at the special feature in the last issue of Organiser, and visit: the UNISON WMD 2005 webpages (click on the WMD banner at unison.org.uk), the special TUC webpage www.tuc.org.uk/h_and_s/index.cfm and the links posted on the GMHC website at www.gmhazards.org.uk/events.htm

How many more must suffer? How many more must die?
Another year and another rise in workplace deaths and injury: 235 deaths; 3,100 seriously injured; and 130,000 off work due to injury for three or more days. Many thousands more are ill or dead from work related road accidents and ill-health.

More than 23,000 deaths per year - go to www.gmhazards.org.uk/2004fig.doc for more information. Research shows that the most effective way of improving workplace health and safety is to give more rights to safety reps and to punish employers who break the law.

Background
Workers' Memorial Day (WMD) takes place all over the world on 28 April each year. Workers and their representatives participate so that those who have needlessly died because of their work are not forgotten, and so that those still at work are not silently left to the same fate. Linking with the themes for the last two years, this years' theme is "prevention and employer accountability".

Employers must do more to prevent work related injury, ill-heath, and death. But where they fail to conduct risk assessments, where they fail to take appropriate preventative and controlling measures, where they are negligent or reckless with workers health and safety; then they must be held to account.

When those who are responsible for workers health and safety are truly held to account, then we can expect a significant improvement in work health and safety.

How can your branch take part?
Make sure that workers at your workplace are not at risk. Use WMD locally to campaign and organise around, and negotiate for better workplace health and safety.

Nationally, take part in organised campaigns: for better rights for safety reps including provisional improvement notices and roving reps; for more effective enforcement of current laws; for higher penalties; for more inspectors in the HSE and local authorities; for a law of corporate killing to make it easier to prosecute negligent employers (both organisations and individual bosses at the top); and for a legal health and safety duty on directors and their equivalents.

Wear the ribbon, put up the posters and plan an event! The familiar forget-me-not purple ribbon will be worn by workers across the world as a symbol of remembrance and solidarity. Using the attached order form, why not order a bulk load of ribbons for your branch from the Greater Manchester Hazards Centre.

A copy of the revised UNISON poster for WMD 2005 (stock no 1288) is available below.

Order further copies from UNISON's communications unit using the order form.

UNISON poster for WMD 2005
Download poster in PDF format

Health and safety bulletin Feb 2005 includes an order form
Online HTML version

Health and safety organiser 37 (Feb 2005) includes an article on Workers' Memorial Day 2005.
Acrobat PDF version
Online HTML version

Suggested branch activities include:

• displaying UNISON's poster;
• ordering and distributing the purple ribbons;
• writing a letter to the local press;
• organising a special meeting on health and safety and the need for more employer accountability;
• organising a safety reps inspection or carrying out some risk, hazard, or body-mapping;
• focusing on a particular issue of concern where you work, such as: occupational health, sickness absence policies, violence, or lone working;
• arranging an event such as planting a memorial tree in a public place, putting up a plaque, dedicating a sculpture, a piece of art, or a bench, to remember workers who have been killed at the workplace or in the community;
• asking local religious centres to include WMD in their worship during the Week;
• negotiating with your employer to allow some form of recognition of the day, such as a one minute silence to remember anyone who has died at your workplace or suffered a work-related illness;
• negotiating for any official flags on public buildings to be flown at half-mast on the day; and/orfinding out what your branch/other branches/unions, your local Hazards group, or regional TUC or Trades Council are planning and taking part or organising a joint event.

Some UNISON regions/regional health and safety committees may also be organising events. Contact your region for further information. And let us know!UNISON wants to know what you plan to carry out for WMD. Email healthandsafety@unison.co.uk or send a brief note to the: Health and Safety Unit, UNISON, 1 Mabledon Place, London, WC1H 9AJ.

Further information
Further information on WMD is available on the following websites: