Memorial Week Events Put Spotlight on Worker Safety

Fighting for the safety and health of all workers and honoring those who have died on the job, CWA locals across the country held a variety of ceremonies and other events April 28 to mark Workers Memorial Day.

In many areas, locals joined with other unions and labor councils for community remembrances. At the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., just outside Washington, D.C., CWA and other unions were on hand for a ceremony to break ground on a permanent workers' memorial.

Workers Memorial Day, first held 19 years ago, falls on the anniversary of the day the Occupational Safety and Health Act was passed in 1970.

"It is not a well publicized day like all the other national holidays or observances, and it isn't a paid day off, but it should be a very important day to working people nonetheless," said CWA Local 9431 President Rick Delao in a letter to his members.

Delao listed four members of other California locals, all telecom technicians, who died as a result of their work between 2003 and 2005. Two were electrocuted, one died of heat stroke and one contracted cancer as a result of exposure to asbestos.

Among the many CWA locals participating in ceremonies nationwide were California Locals 9431, 9421 and 9410, Local 7804 In Tacoma, Wash., Local 7901 in Portland, Ore., Local 1168 in Buffalo, Local 4900 in South Bend, Ind., and Locals 7201 and 7200 in Minneapolis-St. Paul. CWA-represented state workers in New Jersey also took part in a gathering in Trenton.

Members of Local 2004 in West Virginia gathered with other unions in Wheeling, at the memorial site honoring the late UAW president Walter Reuther. Their ceremony specifically remembered the 51 construction worker who plunged to their deaths 30 years ago when a cooling tower collapsed, known as the Willow Island disaster.

A story in the Charleston Gazette noted that OSHA staffing in West Virginia today is one-third less than it was when the disaster happened in 1978. Then there were 17 full-time inspectors; today there are 12. According to OSHA's own figures, the paper said non-mining workplace deaths in the state nearly doubled between Oct. 1, 2006 and Sept. 30, 2007.

In Massachusetts, unions marked Workers Memorial Day with a ceremony at the statehouse. But members of IUE-CWA Local 81201 who were out of town at an OSHA conference made sure that everyone there – including management and non-union workers – marked the day, too.

"We asked for time to explain what Workers Memorial Day is and to have a moment of silence," said Ted Comick, the local's elected safety and health director. "We're trying, whenever we can, wherever we are, to recognize it and put it into people's consciousness."