Fed: Workplace manslaughter laws focus of day of mourning

AAP General News (Australia)
04-28-2005
Fed: Workplace manslaughter laws focus of day of mourning

By Samantha Baden and Kate Lahey

SYDNEY, April 28 AAP - The parents of a man killed at work more than 18 years ago have
confronted Employment Minister Kevin Andrews demanding harsher penalties for employers.

As thousands of unionists around the country marked International Workers Memorial
Day today, the issue of tough punishments for industrial manslaughter and improvements
to workplace safety took centre stage.

Mr Andrews, at a breakfast hosted by the National Occupational Health and Safety Council
in Melbourne, announced a new national safety standard for the construction industry.

The minister stood firm on his opposition to industrial manslaughter laws, saying prevention
through cooperation was more effective than legislation.

Deanne May, whose son Gary was one of four workers killed in an explosion fuelled by
unlabelled sodium nitrate at Victoria's Sims Metal, confronted the minister, saying new
safety standards would not go far enough to prevent deaths.

With her husband Jack and members of the Industrial Deaths Support and Advocacy group,
Mrs May told Mr Andrews nothing had changed since her son's death to force employers to
provide safer workplaces.

"We lost our boy 18-and-a-half years ago and we can see all this all happening over
and over again," she said.

"We just want the opportunity to speak with you ... to explain our situation and the
situation we go through as far as the devastation and what our families have to suffer
and go through and it's just, nothing has changed in all this time."

Mr Andrews agreed to meet the family at a later date.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry also launched its occupational health
and safety reform blueprint, aiming to rein in industrial laws.

The chamber is calling for national standards and says industrial manslaughter, which
exists only in the Australian Capital Territory, should not be pursued.

Mr Andrews said the government opposed industrial manslaughter legislation because
"we shouldn't single out any particular parties".

In Sydney, hundreds of unionists, workers and families gathered in a Sydney park dedicated
to the memory of those who have died on the job.

Andreia Viegas, 27, whose husband Glen was electrocuted last year while demolishing
shop fittings at the Westfield Tuggerah shopping centre on the NSW central coast, called
on all governments to do more to improve workplace safety.

"I don't want Glen to just be a statistic," she said.

"I want his death to be a wake-up call to all employers, employees, governments, and
the whole of Australia.

"Governments must start to spend serious money on implementing tougher laws."

NSW Premier Bob Carr formally unveiled a monument at the park in Darling Harbour, renaming
it Reflection Park as a place of commemoration for workers killed on the job.

About 6,700 Australians die each year in workplace accidents or through work-related
disease, according to the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

Almost 500,000 experience a work-related injury or illness.

AAP smb/jel/evt/sd

KEYWORD: MOURNING NIGHTLEAD

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