This article by Colin Chalmers appeared in The Big Issue on the week of Simon’s 25th birthday and the first campaign action against Euromin<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Simon Jones should have been celebrating his 25th birthday this Tuesday. Instead, his friends will be remembering how he died on the first day of a job he should never have been doing, another of Britain\u2019s rapidly increasing number of people killed at work. There were 302 deaths at work last year, 17% more than the year before. Simon\u2019s death will be included in this year\u2019s total, whatever that comes out at.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Simon was taking a year out from Sussex University when he died. \u201cHe had his exams to study for,\u201d says Emma Aynsley, Simon\u2019s girlfriend when he died, \u201cbut he needed to find work, any work, to get the dole off his back. They just stop your benefit if you won\u2019t take what\u2019s on offer.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Simon got work through a Brighton employment agency, Personnel Selection, working on the bins. Within three days he was off the bins. \u201cI don\u2019t know how he came to be working inside a ship\u201d, says Emma, \u201cEven when the police told me about the accident, I thought it was on the bins.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Employment agencies must, by law, give employees written details of the sort of work they are going to do. They must also ensure that the jobs they send people to are suitable and safe for that person. Personnel Selection refused to comment on this or any other matter relating to Simon\u2019s death.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n On Friday 24th April Simon Jones went to work for his first and last day inside a ship, unloading cobble stones at a Shoreham dock owned by the Dutch-owned company Euromin. He was getting paid about \u00a35 an hour for doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the country.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Simon worked alongside Sean Currey that day. \u201cSimon told me he\u2019d never worked on a ship before,\u201d says Sean, \u201cIt\u2019s a skilled job, and he just turned up and started. I suppose it was lack of staff.\u201d One of the Polish crew was acting as banksman, directing the crane. \u201cIt was a bit worrying,\u201d continues Sean, \u201cbecause I\u2019d heard he knew very little English.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Something else was unusual that day. The crane used for unloading would normally have had either a grab or chains fitted, depending on the cargo. There was no need for the grab to be on the crane that day as the bags of stones were being hooked onto chains.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n A few months earlier, however, the grab had hooks welded inside it, allowing chains to be hung from inside the grab. \u201cIt would only have cost a few pounds to take the grab off and put the hook on each time you needed to\u201d says Sean. \u201cBut it would have cost those few pounds.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n It was about an hour after unloading began that the accident happened. \u201cSuddenly I heard Simon make a grunting noise. When I looked up, his head was trapped in the grab, making his face bulge forward. I knew he was dead when I saw his eyes. He\u2019d obviously died instantly. I shouted up to the Polish banksman to open the grab but he wasn\u2019t using the recognised signals. I ran up the cargo hold and signalled to open the grab, stop the engine and get an ambulance.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Simon\u2019s funeral took place three weeks later in Banbury. As family and friends gathered in the church, Sean got a call on his mobile phone – there had been another accident at Euromin\u2019s docks. A forklift truck had tipped over, ripping a hole in a lorry\u2019s cab. Could Sean get back from the funeral and work that night? He agreed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u201cI was willing to do that, but some things I wouldn\u2019t do. I remember being asked to clean up bags of stones that still had Simon\u2019s blood and other remains on them, so they could be sold. I wouldn\u2019t do that, so I was sent home \u2013 I\u2019ve worked as a docker\u00a0 for years but I\u2019m still casual labour, paid for by the hour.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Casualisation certainly reduces costs for employers (no holiday or sick pay for starters), but for employees it means lower wages, poorer training, no job security \u2013 and worse safety. Casualisation kills – and nowhere more so than on the docks.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n In 1989, the National Dock Labour Scheme, introduced to protect dockers from casualisation, was abolished. Within four years the accident rate in docks had leapt by a third. The Liverpool dockers had been the last to go back to work in the abortive strike against the ending of the scheme. When they went on strike again in 1995, it was once more casualisation they were resisting.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n But the New Britain of the late 1990s has little time for such \u2018labour market inflexibility\u2019. The Liverpool dockers\u2019 strike was viewed by many as a last ditch defence of dinosaur ways that were now a thing of the past. The dockers did find support, however, amongst direct action groups like Reclaim the Streets and Justice? in Brighton. On the first anniversary of the strike, activists from these groups descended on Liverpool docks, joining the picket line, climbing the gantrees before dawn and stopping all work on the docks.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Simon was deeply involved in Justice? and wrote for its national newsletter SchNews. \u201cA lot of people couldn\u2019t understand why all these road protesters and dreadlocked party people supported the dockers,\u201d says Jo, one of Simon\u2019s friends, \u201cbut to Simon the connection was obvious. The dockers were fighting the same crap-jobs-for-crap-pay system that affected us. In the end it was a connection that became all too real for him.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Sean spends a lot more time with his two year old son now. \u201cYou stop worrying about little things and you realise what is important. I get concerned about whether my son will have a father in the future. I can\u2019t blame anyone for the accident because I don\u2019t know the full story, but I do know it has affected me. You realise that everyone doesn\u2019t grow old like you think.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Some friends have decided to set up a memorial campaign for Simon to highlight the dangers that casualisation brings with it. For Simon\u2019s friend Jo, there is no doubt how Simon came to die.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u201cSimon was killed by the money grabbing system he hated. We\u2019ve stopped motorways, defended our right to party and lots more, but it would all be pretty meaningless if we let a mate die and did nothing. I suppose there was a time when you had unions that went on strike over things like this, but not anymore. If we want to make things better, it\u2019s down to us.\u201d<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Life is Cheap In the low paid world of casual labour Simon was just another expendable commodity This article by Colin Chalmers appeared in The Big Issue on the week of Simon’s 25th birthday and the first campaign action against Euromin Simon Jones should have been celebrating his 25th birthday this Tuesday. Instead, his friends … Continue reading Big Issue 6 September 1998<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":100,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-146","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonjones.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonjones.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonjones.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonjones.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonjones.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/simonjones.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1723,"href":"https:\/\/simonjones.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/146\/revisions\/1723"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonjones.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonjones.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}