As workers around Britain and the world prepare to gather at events to 'remember the dead and fight for the living', RMT says that Britain's new corporate manslaughter law still lets killer bosses off the hook - and that unions remain workers' best friend.

"After the Southall, Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield and Potters Bar rail crashes that killed 49, 20 years after the Piper Alpha rig disaster saw 167 workers die, five years after four of our members were killed by a runaway trolley at Tebay, profit is still being put ahead of safety," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.

"Since Tebay there have been at least another 13 runaways of privately operated rail vehicles, all of which could have claimed more lives, and the industry is dragging its heels on the secondary protection we need to stop them.

"After the Greyrigg crash last year the industry asserted that it was down to a local problem, yet an investigation into Network Rail's inspection regime nationwide revealed that our members have been carrying "inadequate" management systems.

"The trade union movement has fought for years for a corporate manslaughter law that would finally make individual bosses shoulder responsibility for the needless deaths their negligence causes.

"After a decade of supposedly Labour government the law we have finally will not deliver justice because it won't put killer bosses in the dock, and slapping fines on corporations is simply not enough.

"We will continue to fight for an end to the privatisation that puts profit ahead of safety and for better legal protection for all, but the fact remains that organised workers enjoy safer workplaces than those who are not in trade unions.

"The message has to be: if you want to be safer at work, join the union and fight alongside your workmates to make your boss take safety seriously," Bob Crow said.

ends

For details of all Workers Memorial Day events, visit the Hazards website at http://www.hazards.org/wmd/index.htm