USW Leads Fight for Safer Workplaces on Workers Memorial Day and Beyond

Health, Safety and Environment Director Mike Wright and progressive talk show host Leslie Marshall last week discussed Workers Memorial Day and the union’s continuing fight to prevent workplace illnesses, injuries and fatalities.

Workers Memorial Day “is a day on which we remember workers who have lost their lives either in the workplace or as a result of their job,” said Wright.

There were nearly 5,000 Americans who died on the job in 2015, or approximately one worker killed every two hours, according to an AFL-CIO report. For every worker killed on the job another eight to ten lost their lives to workplace disease.

Wright warned against calling these incidents accidents. “These are almost all avoidable tragedies,” said Wright. “In almost every case we can find something that should have given people warning, something that the employer just absolutely neglected to fix. We often find working conditions that people complained about. Virtually all of these were foreseeable and preventable.”

Unions are on the vanguard of the fight for safer workplaces.

After the 1992 Westray mining disaster in Nova Scotia, Canada, the USW worked for nearly a decade to change the criminal code so that negligent managers and CEOs can now be prosecuted when workers die. The union spent another decade lobbying to guarantee the law was enforced.

The United States needs similar legislation, Wright said. Because the Trump administration has signaled its intent to roll back worker protections, this may be a protracted battle, but “we will win it someday.”

To hear the full audio, click the video below.

OTHER MATERIALS:

2017 AFL-CIO Deaths on the Job report

2016 AFL-CIO Deaths on the Job report

OSHA worker fatality reports

General information about Worker’s Memorial Day from OSHA

Information about OSHA events in Ohio to mark Worker’s Memorial Day

Washington State Labor and Industry events

International Worker’s Memorial Day commemorated around the world