AFL-CIO NOW BLOG | Workers Memorial Day 2009 Materials Ready Now

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Jordan Barab

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Feb 26, 2009, 11:14:21 AM2/26/09

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Workers Memorial Day 2009 Materials Ready Now

JB Note: Invite your Congresspersons and Senators to your events.

by Mike Hall, Feb 25, 2009

For many of America’s workers, going to work can literally be deadly. The most recent edition of the AFL-CIO’s annual Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect shows that an average of 15 workers a day were killed on the job and each day, another 11,000 workers were injured or made ill in 2007. Overall in 2007 (the latest figures available), 5,488 workers died from workplace injuries and 4.0 million were hurt or made sick by their jobs.

Recent studies have shown that the workplace injury reports may miss as many as two out of three workplace injuries, meaning that the real toll of workplace injuries is much higher than reported.

On April 28, to honor those killed and injured on the job and to call for improved workplace safety, workers in the United States and around the world will mark Workers Memorial Day. The theme of this is “Good Jobs. Safe Jobs. Give Workers a Voice for a Change.”

You can start planning and organizing a Workers Memorial Day event in your workplace or community with materials now available online from the AFL-CIO. The materials include:

· Workers Memorial Day flier.

· Workers Memorial Day poster.

· Workers Memorial Day clip art in English and Spanish:

o Mourn for the Dead, Fight for the Living and

o Good Jobs, Safe Jobs. Give Workers a Voice for a Change;

· Workers Memorial Day stickers.

· Workers Memorial Day events form.

· Workers Memorial Day proclamation.

· Safety and health update (February 2009).

The 2009 edition of Death on the Job, set for release in April, will examine workplace death, injuries and illness by occupation, state and cause. It will analyze trends and examine the federal government’s track record on developing workplace safety standards. It also will look at the enforcement—or lack of it—of current safety laws by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).

The AFL-CIO Workers Memorial Day online tools include links to a collection of workers’ memorials in the United States and around the world and poems and other tributes to workers killed on the job.

The first Workers Memorial Day was observed in 1989. April 28 was chosen because it is the anniversary of the creation of OSHA in 1971 and the day of a similar remembrance in Canada. Trade unionists around the world mark April 28 as an International Day of Mourning for workers killed.

Click here to read how health and safety experts from the labor, scientific and academic fields say OSHA can be rebuilt after the Bush administration spent eight years tearing down the safety agency.

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