WASHINGTON, D.C. — Union members — including firefighters, postal workers, nurses, city workers, janitors, teachers, factory workers, telephone operators and others — will join with members of their communities for Workers Memorial Day to give remembrance to the workers killed on September 11, as well as to those killed and injured on the job last year.
The event is part of Workers Memorial Day, a worldwide annual event which has taken on a new meaning in the wake of the September 11 events. Hundreds of events will take place across the nation and globe and many will feature yellow and black ribbons — black signifies mourning and yellow signifies hope and the fight for the living. Workers Memorial Day is on April 28, though events occur all weekend.
In New York City, thousands of local union members will join national and New York City labor and community leaders on Friday, April 26 — including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney — to remember the workers killed on September 11. Under the banner of “Mourn for the Dead and Fight for the Living,” hundreds will hold a Workers Memorial Day church service and will then have a bagpipe-led procession to the World Trade Center site. They will gather to recognize that though nothing could have saved the workers killed on September 11, one of the best ways to honor them is to work for safer workplaces and to help workers improve their lives through unions.
The union members are calling for all workers in Lower Manhattan to observe a minute of silence at noon on Friday, April 26 to honor the workers who died on September 11 and on the job last year. They will pass out 100,000 leaflets and stickers at subway stops to ask people to observe the minute of silence.
Workers Memorial Day is traditionally a time to commemorate the victims of workplace injuries, diseases and fatal catastrophes. The AFL-CIO will release a study entitled “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect; a State-by-State Profile of Worker Safety and Health in the United States,” which shows that overall workplace injuries and fatalities declined slightly, but are on the rise for certain groups of workers including Hispanic workers. The study also shows that protections across the states vary widely. Alaska, Wyoming and Montana had the highest fatality rates in 2000 while Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire had the lowest. It would take federal OSHA 84 years to inspect all the workplaces under its jurisdiction just once.
While more than 1.8 million workers each year suffer ergonomics injuries such as repetitive motion injuries and back injuries, the Bush Administration struck down the ergonomics standard which had been 10 years in the making and has announced that it will rely on voluntary measures to address this problem. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released new data showing that in 21 of 43 states reporting, ergonomic injuries went up between 1999 and 2000. The most dramatic increases are: 40 percent more workers who had to take off work because of an injury in Maine, 32 percent in Nevada, 17 percent in California, and 10 percent in Massachusetts.