Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK)
FACK c/o Greater Manchester Hazards Centre,
Windrush Millennium Centre,
70 Alexandra Road,
Manchester M16 7WD
Tel: 0161 636 7557 Email: mail@gmhazards.org.uk Web: www.fack.org.uk
‘We didn’t vote to die at work so stop killing us!’
No-one should be killed at work and employers should not escape justice.
Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK) was set up by families of those killed by or at work. FACK was launched in 2006 and is run by the Greater Manchester Hazards Centre (GMHC). FACK offers help to the families of those killed in work-related incidents by negligent employers. We support families through the investigation, inquest and trial process with information and advocacy. FACK aims to ensure as much justice as possible and that the voices of those impacted are heard in the campaign to stop work-related deaths. No-one’s death is just a statistic and almost every work-related death could and should have been prevented.
FACK founder members
Dawn and Paul Adams: ‘our son Samuel Adams was 6 when he was killed by construction failures in newly opened shopping centre in 1998′
Linzi Herbertson: ‘my husband Andrew Herbertson, aged 29 was killed at work in 1998′
Mike and Lynne Hutin: ‘our son Andrew Hutin, aged 20 was killed at work in 2001′
Mick and Bet Murphy: ‘our son Lewis Murphy, aged 18 was killed at work in 2004′
Louise Taggart: ‘my brother Michael Adamson, aged 26 was killed at work in 2005′
Linda Whelan: ‘my son Craig Whelan, aged 23 was killed at work in 2002′
Dorothy and Douglas Wright: ‘our son Mark Wright, aged 37 was killed at work in 2005′
Read the press releases about some of those killed at work and whose families and groups we have supported.
No one should die at work! According to the HSE official statistics, every year in Great Britain work kills up to 1,500 people but the Hazards Campaign provides more realistic estimates. Working people are killed in workplaces, on land, at sea and in the air. Many die on the roads driving as part of their job or of work-related suicides and some when working for other employers. Workers don’t die in tragic accidents but in foreseeable and preventable incidents. Many happen as a result of employer negligence, cost-cutting and failure to comply with the law. HSE inspections, resources and enforcement have been weakened by the government over the last decade adding greater risks to workers. FACK campaigns and provides a voice for affected families with the aim of justice and the end to all preventable work-related deaths caused by criminal negligence. No-one’s death is just a statistic.
Louise Taggart, founder Facker uses FACK family stories as she accepts award for most influential health and safety person in the 2018.
FACK aims:
- To unite families in one strong voice to campaign for an end to work-related deaths, by stronger regulations and preventative enforcement
- To demand better treatment and support for families bereaved by work, and free legal representation at inquests
- To support, advise and advocate for families during the investigation process
- To publicise the true number of people killed in work-related incidents, to refute the lies that good health and safety is a burden on employers’ by showing that it is us who bear the burden of employers’ criminal negligence
- To put a face to each person killed so we remember them while fighting back and to ensure they are especially commemorated on International Workers Memorial Day on 28 April every year, with the slogan’ Remember the Dead and Fight for the Living’
Please support us by:
- Sending FACK a message of support from your union branch/organisation
- Ordering our DVD: Face the FACKS: the human cost of workplace killing for £10
- Join us on Facebook: Families Against Corporate Killers
- Contact us for help and put families bereaved by work in touch with us
- Use our stories and information and join us to lobby MPs, MSPs, Cllrs., government ministers, employers for better health and safety at work
- Asks for a FACK speaker to come to a meeting
- Tell us YOUR story
- Donating to support our work – send cheques made out to GMHC Ltd. With ‘For FACK’ on the back, or contact us for BACS details FACK c/o G.M. Hazards Centre.
Face the FACKS: the human cost of workplace killing
FACK is part of the Hazards Campaign and Facebook group – ‘We didn’t vote to die at work’. The campaign promotes International Workers Memorial Day IWMD on 28 April every year with the slogan ‘Remember the Dead and Fight for the Living’ . FACK provides a statement which is read out at hundreds of events across the country Many FACK families have spoken at IWMD events across the country and Louise Taggart has told Michael’ story to employers across the UK, in Europe and in Australia.
Read more about FACK’s work in Hazards Magazine:
A message from FACK families:
This is all about love for our families, we want them to come home safe and well after work every day. We have had enough of safety injustices at work and FACK is fighting back!
“FACK is for all families who have suffered a work-related death. It’s a campaign for changes in the law and practices relating to investigation, prosecution and sentencing. It’s a call for more action to ensure employers comply with the law to prevent deaths at work, protect workers and the public. We call on other families to join us and for trade unions and others to support and work with us. FACK members are not motivated by hatred and revenge but by the love for the people they have lost. Guided by compassion and not wanting anyone else to go through the same pain where it can be prevented. We may be angry but it is a righteous anger in wanting justice we have been denied, and for employers who kill through gross negligence to face the same level of accountability and penalty that anyone else faces. We don’t want to see lots of employers in jail because that would mean lots of dead workers. We want the sanction of imprisonment to be used as a deterrent for those responsible for decisions that kill because this is the highest punishment society metes out to wrong doers, and it is clear that current law and enforcement, and voluntary duties on directors are not a credible deterrent to stop workplace deaths.
We can’t bring back the people we have lost but we can fight to stop other deaths & prevent others walking in our shoes”
FACK was launched in July 2006 and immediately lobbied for a tough new laws on Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill going through Parliament –link to photos . Despite being promised face to face by a Home Office minister that even though Directors Duties were excluded from this law, they would be brought in separately soon, they never were and the whole Act is weaker than we campaigned for the Corporate Manslaughter Bill. So we continue campaigning.
Since 2007 when Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act came into force there have been around 30 prosecutions but none at all in Scotland. 25 companies have been convicted, four cleared, only seven of the convictions resulted in fines over £500,000 which was promised as the norm. All of the cases have been for small or occasionally medium sized enterprises, not the larger companies we campaigned for the new law to hold accountable.
There have been 78 convictions of Gross Negligence Manslaughter, GNM, for an individual, relating to work since the first conviction of an employer Norman Holt in 1989 whose company killed worker George Kenyon but he was not sentenced to prison. The first employer ever sent to jail for killing a worker was Roy Hill in 1994. Nearly all of the 78 GNM convictions were of sole traders or owners of very small businesses. Sentencing guidelines for Corporate Manslaughter and other health and safety offences in 2015 have led to larger fines on companies for offences that kill workers. The new sentencing guidelines for GNM relating to work came into force in November 2018 and there have only been 3 cases sentenced since then- for four and a half years, three and a half years and the latest case of Han Rao sentenced for four years for the manslaughter of employee Marian Iancu Rao http://www.unisonwalthamforest.org.uk/2020/02/05/wf-trades-council-comment-on-jailing-of-employer-for-worker-manslaughter/ Previously most cases of GNM resulted in sentences of months, or possibly 1 to 2 years, with only a few of over with 4 -6 years, and many being suspended sentences See Cameron Minshull case http://www.hazards.org/deadlybusiness/cameronminshull.htm
The fight for justice continues: We can’t bring back the people we have lost but we can fight to stop other deaths & prevent others walking in our shoes
