Get Set for Workers Memorial Day, April 28

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/04/10/get-set-for-workers-memorial-day-april-28/

Get Set for Workers Memorial Day, April 28


It’s been more than 30 years since Congress passed the nation’s first comprehensive workplace health and safety law—the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act, championed by unions and their allies. Since then, safety and health activists have continued to fight for new and stronger workplace safety protections that have saved thousands of lives and prevented many, many more injuries.



Despite the progress, every year, thousands of workers still are killed on the job, while millions more are injured or made ill. On April 28, the AFL-CIO union movement, workplace safety activists and even the global union movement will observe Workers Memorial Day to honor the men and women killed and injured on the job.

Along with remembering fallen workers, Workers Memorial Day every year offers a chance for us to focus on how much more needs to be done to ensure workers’ jobs don’t kill and maim them.

At rallies, memorial services, marches and meetings, workers also will spotlight the Bush administration’s failed and flawed safety policies and record. Working closely with its corporate friends, the administration has withdrawn dozens of important new safety rules and favored voluntary compliance—telling employers “police yourself”—over tough new protections and enforcement.

The most recent example occurred last week when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced it finally would follow up with employers who were sent ergonomic hazard alert letters following inspections. But some of those ergonomic alerts are from as far back as 2002 and the follow-ups do not include a re-inspection to determine if the hazard was corrected but relies upon the employers’ report. OSHA did say inspections could occur if the agency is not satisfied with the response.

Workers and their unions have fought and won many significant safety battles. But considering the Bush administration’s years of inaction, there is much more to accomplish, including:

* Passing and enforcing tough, new penalties for companies that repeatedly break job safety laws. Today, weak penalties serve as little deterrent.
* Revising out-of-date and inadequate workplace health and safety standards.
* Addressing long-ignored but long-recognized hazards that have received little attention.
* Fighting the ergonomic hazards that still cripple and injure more workers than any other workplace hazard.
* Protecting Latino and immigrant workers who are being killed on the job in record numbers.
* Preventing coal mine deaths that more than doubled last year.
* Bringing the protection of the OSH Act to the millions of workers not covered by the law.
* Developing a workplace standard for the 9 million health care workers and responders who face the threat of a flu pandemic.

A few days before Workers Memorial Day, we will release Death on the Job, the 2007 edition of the AFL-CIO’s comprehensive, state-by-state, occupation-by-occupation analysis of the most recent job safety statistics. The 16th edition also will examine the Bush administration’s record, actions and funding for job safety since taking office in 2001.

FULL story at link.


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