Workers too scared to report accidents
May 23, 2014

If you’ve got a genuine personal injury claim, you shouldn’t be afraid to make a claim for work accident compensation. It is unfair dismissal if an employer sacks someone for making a claim or reporting a health and safety issue.

Yet is seems that on some big projects, there is a culture of treating health and safety as a bit of a joke and making workers worry about being laid off if they report a problem or make a compensation claim. For some years, this was the case with large building and engineering contractors with subbies finding they had no more work if they made a claim and we had hoped that had been exposed and stamped out.

However, a recent article in the Guardian flagged up a recent problem on the Crossrail project.

It appears that Crossrail wanted to check up to make sure their contractors, BBMV were doing things properly and went around watching and videoing the work being done. But this caused workers to be terrified of reporting any incidents or making work accident compensation claims in case the contractors laid them off. And instead of addressing the health and safety issues they found, Crossrail’s managers are accused of photographing or videoing contractors’ staff who may be in danger and emailing it to others “with unmasked glee”.

BBMV commissioned their own report which highlighted the culture of fear and criticised Crossrail’s managers for not dealing with working practices that were dangerous.

Sadly, it’s the workers, often those who are young and inexperienced, who suffer when big companies allow health and safety to become a joke.

If you’ve been injured at work, don’t be put off. Ring Beth King, our work accident claims specialist solicitors on 020 8313 1300 020 8313 1300.