news analysis: international action over asbestos
WORKERS, MAY 2003 ISSUE
TRULY INTERNATIONAL ACTION by South African Trade Unions (the National Union of Mineworkers and the National Union of Metalworkers), Britain's leading labour lawyers (Thompsons Solicitors) and trade unionists seconded from Unison plus links with US trade unionists, have secured a compensatory award for South African asbestos miners.
The trust fund, which figures nearly £40 million, will compensate over 4,000 claimants and dependants of miners during the next 30 years. The compensation fund was forcibly extracted from the South African mining corporations Gencor and Gefco, despite their attempts to “unbundle” their assets worldwide to disguise their tracks. The South African corporations were owned by US conglomerates who previously were protected by the apartheid regime for decades.
The South African companies essentially were the point of production – the asbestos mines – for asbestos production and distribution worldwide. The world head office being Turner & Newall, USA.
Asbestos dust produces many cancers. The most common is mesothelioma – cancer of the lining of the lung – is terminal. The unravelling of Turner & Newall commenced with US trade unionists pursuing negligence cases for dead and dying colleagues exposed to asbestos sprayed onto the concrete and walls during the construction of the Chase Manhattan Bank, Wall Street, USA in the mid-1980s.
Secret archives
The forcing of Turner & Newall to open its secret archives under the US Freedom of Information Act, showed that the company had sufficient medical research and data as early as 1942 to comprehend the devastating and dangerous impact which asbestos – blue and white – had on health.
The revelations in Wall Street then crossed the Atlantic to Armley in Leeds. The Turner & Newall factory, J. W. Roberts, had been closed in 1958. Campaigners in Leeds believed the plant was closed because Turner & Newall knew then that the dangers were so great that to avoid a public outcry, closure was better than public exposure.
The only difficulty was that the exposure of citizens of Leeds to the deadly fibres had already occurred. The symptoms began manifesting themselves anywhere up to 30 years later. Hence Leeds in the early 1990s had what health officials described as an “epidemic” of mesothelioma cases – over 180. All cases are terminal.
If production ceases it does not stop the passing on of the deadly symptoms spanning generations, the Armley area of Leeds being viewed as saturated with particles. If 180 was an epidemic, then what of South Africa with over 4,000 registered compensation claims? 4,000 only being the tip of the problem – those still alive – as the problem had been suppressed for decades by apartheid.
Though the South African mines have been closed, at the epicentre of production, for example Heuningulei, blue asbestos debris remains dumped and exposed to the elements. Schools are built from the ore; children play in asbestos ridden schoolyards. The mining may have ceased but the dangers remain for generations to come.
Genuine internationalism between British, US and South African workers have crossed three continents to expunge the killer industrial disease – from South African mine, to Leeds factory, to US office block – exposing the greed of the multinational companies and the regime which they maintained in power.