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Listen to War on the Workers
There is growing concern among all Americans as the death toll mounts in Iraq...
close to a hundred this month alone. We remember how the 58,000 American deaths over the course of the war in Vietnam
just about tore this country apart.
Do you know how many US workers die every year as a result of going to work?
Most people are flabbergasted to learn that 60,000 death claims are paid annually
for work-related deaths. That's more *every* year than all GIs killed during the entire course of the Vietnam war.... almost
20 times the number who died on September 11, 2001. That's 164 workers every day.
About one in ten of
those workers dies instantly ... The newspapers tend to chronicle these "tragic accidents" as human interest stories --
falls, electrical shocks, trucks jack-knifing, fires, collapsing walls in buildings, ditches, mines that take the lives of
some 6000 workers a year ...but the newspaper coverage seldom, if ever, looks into the often completely preventable causes
of these deaths -- workplace speedups, lack of proper safety equipment, mandatory overtime, shoddy substandard unregulated
construction, inadequate staffing.
Only in the most outrageous cases, as when owners of the Imperial Foods
poultry processing plant in Hamlet, NC claimed that they "had to lock their workers
inside" to "keep them from stealing chicken parts," (twenty five workers burned to death on September 3, 1991), do we see
any investigation into employer fault. And even in that case, there was no trial. Plea bargains and deals, but no real
punishment, and no real compensation to the victims or their families.
... Nine out of ten workers who die from
going to work do not even get a human interest story ... tens of thousands privately suffer lingering deaths from silicosis,
asbestosis, brown lung, black lung, cancers contracted from continued workplace exposure to carcinogens.
It
remains to be seen how many work-related deaths will result from the workers who cleaned up toxic lower Manhattan in the aftermath
of September 11th ... It will not surprise safety and health experts if that death toll greatly exceeds the number killed
when the planes hit the buildings.
Our continent is covered with monuments to slaughtered workers... And corporations
still treat workplace safety the same way they treat pollution ... with a cost/benefit analysis. Is it cheaper to fix
it or to pay the fines? When it comes to workers' lives, it's almost always cheaper for companies to risk the fines
than it is to protect their workers. I'm paraphrasing slightly here, but at a Workers' Memorial Day in Springfield,
IL in the early 90's I heard Lynn Martin, then Secretary of Labor, say to the assembled crowd of workers, "Employers have
made mistakes of judgment in the past ... treated their employees as if they were expendable... but now we now that workers
are valuable assets to companies, who make huge investments in their training." That was the enlightened corporate-speak
of the early 90s and things have really deteriorated since then.
When workers do stand up to corporations, they're
in for the battle of their lives...
There is almost certainly some sort of Workers' Memorial Day observance
near you this April 28. Click on the adjacent box to find the event nearest to you if you live in the US.
Workers' Memorial Day began in Sudbury, ON - certainly a dangerous place to work
- http://www.clc-ctc.ca/campaigns/4-28/backgroundA-e.htm has information for Canada.
Remember Mother Jones' words: "Mourn the dead
and fight like hell for the living." Raise your voice every day for a safe workplace.
Listen to Harry Stamper's fabulous We Just Come to Work Here
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NEVER AGAIN!
| Click on the photo to hear "War on the Workers" |
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| or Harry Stamper's "We Just Come to Work Here" |
Events near you
| Miners' Monument at Ludlow, CO |
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| Read about the desecration & restoration |
Buy "Union Maid" for the Union Maid in your life - or for your favorite working class hero!
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