Julie Burchill Saturday January 5, 2002 The Guardian
What slippery, shiny, brave new workplaces we labour in these days, slick with touchy-feely-speak that comes off on your fingers when you push too hard or hold on too long. If, like me, you've always been suspicious of "therapy" and suspect that it is often used as a placebo with which to soothe and dismiss real grievances, you won't have been surprised by the way it has so effortlessly lent its shape-shifting colours to the 21st-century world of work. These days, you're not sacked; "We're going to let you go". You're not kicked from pillar to post without a square foot of space to call your own; you're "hot-desking". As the rights of workers have been eroded over the past two decades, so the clammy clutch of Me Generation claptrap has stepped smartly in to fill the void. We're all buddies, pulling for the same team; don't let's make it all nasty and commercial, bringing unfriendly things such as rights to the party. You're okay, I'm okay! You don't have to be beaten down and brain dead to work here, but it helps!
Many people who use those words will think that Anne and Chris Jones should "move on", that they should seek "closure" and "let it go". After all, their son, Simon, was killed on April 24, 1998. What's their problem? Their problem is that he died two hours into his first day of work for Euromin at Shoreham docks, having been sent there by a Brighton employment agency, Personnel Selection, on his year out from Sussex university. The job of stevedoring - working with heavy machinery on, in and around container ships - was traditionally a highly skilled, heavily unionised profession, and is deemed one of the five most dangerous jobs. Naturally, the trade was run into the ground in the 1980s, then reassembled with unskilled, casual labour. The reason? The only reason business ever does anything: to save money and maximise profit. (A day or so later, Euromin manager Richard Martell told one of Simon's workmates, who had witnessed his horrific death, to hose the blood off a pile of stones. He was sent home without pay for refusing to do so.)
Personnel Selection gave Simon a hard hat, but when he arrived at Euromin he was told to get straight to work, and never told to wear it. A court later deplored Euromin's lack of health and safety, yet fined it just £50,000. As for Personnel Selection, despite repeated pleas from Simon's friends and family for its role to be investigated, the then secretary of state for trade and industry, Peter Mandelson, decided the case did not warrant it. But then, no employment agency has ever been prosecuted in this country, despite the fact that they now process more than a quarter of a million people a year (up from 90,000 in 1993).
In the past 10 years, more than 3,000 people have died at work, and a further 200,000 suffered serious injury. Every day, workers are sent into situations that, without skill and training, can prove fatal. Why? So some bloated businessman can shove even more dosh into his slush fund.
But blaming a capitalist for greed is like blaming a pig for rolling in muck; it's what they do. Money is their life, their wife, their logic. What is truly amazing and vile is this government's attitude to such disregard for human life. "Labour": how the word sticks in the craw - not one of them has done a day's labour in their lives. I suppose it's hard to empathise with people dying on the job when the nastiest thing you'll experience at work is fingermarks on your £300-a-roll wallpaper. As for that Holy Family for the photo-opportunity age, the Blairs, so caring and concerned, ordinary folks like us... except that Nicky and Euan will never have their heads crushed by the 2.5 tonne grab of a crane on the first day of a holiday job because some cowboy wants to screw every last penny out of their labour.
When my dad died from mesothelioma three years ago, brought on by the asbestos he'd worked with, un-protected, as a teenage labourer, I wrote this: "People are always ready to point out how many millions of people were killed by communism and fascism. But they never, ever tell you how many people were killed by capitalism. Because a) they wouldn't know where to start counting and b) it would never end." In caring, sharing New Labour Britain, people - someone's son, mother, brother - die every day in the silent civil war that the rich ceaselessly wage against the poor. This is the reason why it is so important to hold on to our unions. Only with them is some parity brought to the battleground. Without them, it is forever open season on those who live by hiring out their labour.
Like Stephen Lawrence, Simon Jones was one of those people who seem to personify the corny old line about the good dying young. And, like Stephen, he died for something just as evil as racism - for the love of money and the importance of profit above all else. His death was the result of the failures of Euromin and his grave was then danced on by the authorities. We'll never know what this clever, kind, accomplished young man might have achieved, but even though he died at 24, we will remember his name decades after those responsible for his death have been forgotten and their reputations ground into dust. Simon Jones is forever young, never to be surprised in shame or compromise, and the kiss of life to those of us who had lost sight of what really matters. Refusing to "move on" or "let it go", and spitting in the face of "closure" is the best tribute we can pay him.