by Mike Hall, Apr 29, 2011
In Michigan yesterday, workers not only honored those killed and injured on the job as part of Workers Memorial Day ceremonies at the state Capitol in Lansing, they warned that plans to dismantle the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) and repeal the state’s workplace safety law would put workers at risk.
UAW Region1C Director Norwood Jewell said:
We remember those that are injured and it brings to light the fact they are talking about defunding MIOSHA. We still have people dying in workplaces. We have come too far to go backwards.
Michigan AFL-CIO Health and Safety Director Derrick Quinney says, “Even in a common-sense topic like public safety, our Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation in Michigan that will repeal the Michigan Occupational and Safety Health Act in favor of a federal OSHA program.”
Instead of stripping away our law that we know works, why not update it with further rules and regulations to keep our workers safe on the job?
The real goal of our Republican legislature is to take away workers’ rights and weaken the role of protecting workers in the public. These are the same coordinated attacks that are happening in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio. This isn’t about the budget—these attacks threaten the economic security and safety of all workers.
Read more here.
Elsewhere on Workers Memorial Day, Mike Staley of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 649, offered a prayer during services at Laborers (LIUNA) Local 538 in Galesburg, Ill.
Every worker killed on a job is a mother or father, son or daughter, brother or sister…They were all part of our communities, part of our lives.
Tom Lowey of the Galesburg Register Mail notes:
Finding a worker who knew of a fatal accident in the workplace wasn’t hard. Randy Bryan, a member of the Operators 649 Local out of Peoria, knew a crane operator killed two years ago. The message delivered Thursday was that workplace safety is a very real issue.
Click here for his full story.
Cheryl Rouse, a member of Machinist Local 1005 and chair of the safety committee at the Daimler truck plant in Portland Ore., says all workers feel the emotional sting when a co-worker is hurt or killed. She told Public News Service:
Most of us here have had children, become grandparents and everything else. So, when somebody gets hurt, it affects everybody, kind of personally, because that’s the person you’ve worked next to for 20 years.
At a Salem Workers Memorial Day event she and others read the names of the 34 Oregon workers killed in 2010. Says Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain:
As our economy picks back up it is crucial that Oregon employers continue to prioritize safety at the workplace—anything else would be unacceptable and undermine the years of work we all have put in to strengthening protections at the workplace.
AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Liz Shuler told a National Labor College (NLC) audience in Silver Spring. Md., that the labor movement was instrumental in winning landmark job safety laws and “and the progress we’ve made has been tremendous—worth celebrating. But our job is not done.”
The simple truth is that our jobs are still terribly dangerous. Some data suggest that deaths from workplace chemical exposure and cancer are actually on the rise. Immigrant workers are still getting sick picking vegetables and they’re getting hurt and killed by falling off of roofs and ladders. And millions of office workers are injured or in pain because of poor ergonomics
We will never forget those who died in the workplace or while trying to organize workers. We remember them every day, with the work we do to improve the safety and health of all working people… and to gain and safeguard for all working people the basic human right to form unions to bargain for a better life.
Read her full address here.
