Workers' Memorial Day

April 28th

Today is Workers’ Memorial Day, a day to honor those who have died on the job. It’s also World Day for Safety and Health at Work. Two days that sound similar, and yet their websites expose their different perspectives. The Worker’s Memorial Day website states the day was “established to recognize workers who died or who suffered from exposure to hazards at work.” The World Day for Safety and Health at Work instead talks about GDP and what percentage of the global GDP is lost due to work days lost from safety and health related issues. One’s about people, the other’s about the bottom line.

On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village caught fire. Because the employers had locked the doors to keep employees from taking unauthorized breaks, 146 workers died. Most of them were young women, Italian and Jewish immigrants. The owners were known for employing young female immigrants because they could pay them less, and they were less likely to unionize. Because of the fire, laws were passed to improve safety standards. The fire also led to growth in the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union, a union that has helped improve the lives of sweatshop workers.

But the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory wasn’t the biggest work related disaster in the US – a fertilizer explosion in Texas City in the 1940’s is estimated to have killed between 500-600 people and injured 1000’s. And disasters related to safety violations aren’t a thing of the past. The collapse of a cooling tower during a construction of a power station in West Virginia killed 51 workers in 1978. In 1988 an oil platform exploded off the coast of Scotland killing 68. Both sites were found to have safety violations. And in 1991 a chicken processing plant in North Carolina caught fire and once again workers couldn’t get out due to doors being locked to prevent theft and cut down on flies. Twenty-five workers died and fifty-four were injured.

It’s not just injuries and disasters that kill workers. Mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos exposure seen in miners and construction workers, caused 45,221 deaths between 1999 and 2015. Agent Orange is believed to have caused 300,000 deaths of veterans between 1961 and 1972. And then there is the lack of dignity employers give workers. An Amazon worker died on the job in 2022 from a heart attack, and rather than shut down operations, managers had workers keep working while the man’s body lay there for the rest of the shift.

image by Emily Gibbons

This is why days like Workers’ Memorial Day exist. This is why unions exist. And this is why it’s important for each of us to consider what we support and what we don’t want to support. Do we want to give business to companies that don’t pay a living wage? Do we want to support corporations that can’t manage to treat employees with dignity? Do we want to spend money at union-busting businesses?

On May 1^st, even if you can’t skip work or school – you can express your values with your dollars and not support companies that don’t provide good wages, good benefits, good work environments, and dignity for workers. That’s a bare minimum employers owe their workers.