LONDON, October 27 /PRNewswire/ --

- Unite Photo Opportunity:

LOCATION: Old Palace Yard/College Green, Westminster, SW1A. DATE: Tuesday 28th October, 2008. TIME: from 1.00pm.

Hundreds of union members will descend on Westminster tomorrow (Tuesday, 28th) to lobby Parliament to demand justice for asbestos victims and the restoration of compensation for victims of pleural plaques.

Unite believe thousands of seriously wronged workers have been plunged into compensation limbo by the House of Lords decision, in October 2007, which ended the right of asbestos victims suffering from this disease to compensation.

According to Unite, the workers are victims of employer negligence and are facing the twin blows of knowing they have a very high risk of developing an asbestos related disease that will kill them, and the denial of the compensation they and their families rightly deserve.

Unite is joining with Ucatt and the GMB in a joint lobby of Parliament in an attempt to persuade the government to over-turn the Lords' ruling and reinstate compensation for victims of pleural plaques. Unite's priority is to get this decision reversed to ensure financial justice is done for these stricken workers. Unite also want to see an insurance scheme set up, similar to that established to protect drivers and pedestrians against the action of uninsured drivers, to help the thousands of asbestos victims.

Unite Deputy General Secretary, Graham Goddard, said:

The Lords' ruling was a disaster for working people. There is only one cause of this disease and that is the widespread, indiscriminate use of asbestos throughout industry for years. No one protected our people from this exposure, and now they are suffering.

Employers' insurers simply want to walk away leaving workers, whose lungs are now full of asbestos, facing a lifetime of worry and not a penny in compensation. This is not right.

Compensation must come from those who put them at risk in the first place, and from an insurance industry which made money from that risk.

But it is clear that neither employers nor the insurance industry will do right by these workers so we need our government to make them.

There will be a joint union photocall involving hundreds of union members and asbestos victims at 1pm at Old Palace Yard/College Green on Tuesday 28th October, opposite the House of Lords. The members and victims attending the lobby will be waving banners and placards demanding 'Justice for Asbestos Victims' before meeting their MPs.

For further information please contact or Ashraf Choudhury in the Unite Press Office on +44(0)20-7420-8914 or +44(0)7980-224761.