workers memorial day

By staff - International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), April 24, 2023

On International Workers’ Memorial Day, 28 April, trade unions are promoting the role that organising plays in making workplaces safer and healthier as we remember all working people who have lost their lives to workplace accidents and disease.

Workers’ unions are planning to use the new ILO fundamental right to a safe and healthy working environment to tackle the shocking death toll of three million workers who die each year because of their work, with tens of millions more suffering life-changing injuries and ill health.

Trade unions will use organising to ensure that the new fundamental right is put into practice and makes a positive difference to the daily lives of working people. The two ILO Conventions (155 and 187) provide backing for union organising, through the creation of workplace safety committees with worker representation, and worker safety representatives in workplaces.

This organising can improve the working environment through the right to refuse dangerous work and consultation rights over risk assessments, occupational health services and the provision of personal protective equipment. Convention 187 also requires the creation of national tripartite health and safety bodies with representation for government, workers and employers.

Combatting toxic workplaces

Around the world, unions will use 28 April to fight risks like asbestos and toxic chemicals, and hazards like long hours and stress in the workplace, as well as demanding an increase in the number of countries ratifying and implementing all ILO health and safety Conventions.

ITUC Deputy General Secretary Owen Tudor said: “Every working person has the right to expect to return home at the end their day’s work. No one should die just to make a living.”

Trade unions make work safer, and they have already saved lives in these areas:

Silicosis

Companies are continuing to expose millions of workers to excessive levels of silica dust, which can cause deadly cancers and lung diseases. Australian unions won new restrictions on products containing silica and cut in half the exposure limit to silica for workers, which could see cases of deadly silicosis drop to one-sixth of the current level.

Seafarers

In 2022, a Dutch court handed an important victory to the ITF, FNV Havens and Nautilus NL who had brought a legal case against Marlow Cyprus, Marlow Netherlands and Expert Shipping. The court ruled that ship managers, ship owners and charterers must honour the non-seafarer’s work clause that only professional dockers do demanding, skilful lashing work when they are available, rather than seafarers. The decision means greater safety for seafarers and secures jobs for dockers.

Nursing homes

In 2020/21, 75,000 nursing home residents in the USA died from the SARS-CoV-2 virus with more than one million nursing home workers testing positive. Unionised nursing homes reported Covid-19 mortality rates of residents 10.8% lower and an infection rate of workers 6.8% lower.

By Ed Finn - Rabble.Ca, April 28, 2017

April 28 is the National Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job. This is the second of a two-part series. read part one here.

The lack of safety in Canada's workplaces is a national -- and international -- disgrace. Many of our industries neglect safety training, skimp on safety equipment and keep employees unaware of the danger of new chemicals. In our fiercely competitive global market, they will put the maximization of profits ahead of the "costly" provision of safe workplaces -- as long as they can get away with it.

Our governments, too, have given on-the-job safety an inexcusably low priority. Oh yes, they've beefed up work safety rules, even given workers the right to refuse dangerous duties, the right to sit on industrial health and safety committees -- even the right to be informed about the dangers of any material they are obliged to handle.

But, as with Bill C-45, no such legal rights can be exercised without managerial retaliation unless workplaces are regularly inspected and safety laws strictly enforced. And on that score, our federal and provincial governments have fallen shamefully short.

Without stringent government oversight, employers are left free to flout safety rules and regulations. They can maintain their profits-before-personnel policy with virtual impunity.