Don Mullin (L), executive secretary of the St. Paul Building and Construction Trades Council, draped a black sash over the cross bearing the name of Daniel Lee, who died on the jobsite in November when a structural column fell on him. Ironworkers Local 512 President Troy Sebion held Lee’s cross during the Workers Memorial Day ceremony on the Capitol grounds. Sebion called Lee his best friend and said Lee nominated him to serve as the union’s president. “He was the best,” Sebion said. “Good worker, good father, horrible golfer. I miss him.”
Local unions’ Workers Memorial Day observances took on heightened urgency this year, as the Trump administration sought to hollow out federal agencies critical to protecting workers from injury, illness and death on the job.
Workers Memorial Day falls on April 28, the date President Richard Nixon signed the Occupa-tional Safety and Health Act into law in 1971. Unions across the U.S. hold events to honor workers who died on the job and rededicate their organizations to fighting for safer workplaces.
But 54 years since the landmark, bipartisan law took effect, Trump and his billionaire backers are moving to dramatically – and recklessly, unions say – to scale back the federal government’s investment in workplace safety.
Most alarming to worker advocates is a two-thirds reduction in staff at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a division of the Health and Human Services Department that is dedicated to research that protects workers.
The agency’s recommendations are relied on by workers and employers throughout the world. Its work has informed life-saving regulations around asbestos, bloodborne pathogens, silica and black lung, and it tests and authorizes safety equipment relied on by American workers across most industries.
A coalition of unions has filed a lawsuit to restore staffing at NIOSH.
Meanwhile, workers in the Department of Labor, according to a report in The Guardian, have warned of widespread resignations that could cripple the federal government’s ability to investigate and enforce wage-and-hour and OSHA regulations.
Twin Cities Building Trades unions held a Workers Memorial Day ceremony at the Capitol on April 28.
If Trump succeeds in steering the federal government away from its responsibility to protect worker safety, labor leaders warn, it will put overwhelming pressure on unions and state and local agencies to pick up the slack.
“The realities of our present day are disturbing,” Dan McConnell, president of the Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council, said during a Workers Memorial Day ceremony in St. Paul. “We must remember, while political leaders come and go, our movement endures, and our job remains unchanged.”
Held at the Minnesota Workers Memorial Garden on the Capitol grounds, the ceremony wove together solemn remarks from union leaders and state regulators about their commitment to safety on the job with a sobering reminder of what’s at stake in that work.
Dean Gale, business manager of St. Paul Plumbers Local 34, offered an opening prayer from a podium placed before a row of five white crosses, each bearing the name of a union tradesperson who died in jobsite accidents or from work-related illnesses in the past year.
“Help us honor the legacy the fallen have built and left behind,” Gale said. “You can see it in the skyline.”
The names affixed to the crosses included James Baker III of Bricklayers Local 1, David Buck of Operating Engineers Local 49, Gregory E. Jeanette of IBEW Local 242, Daniel L. Lee of Ironworkers 512 and Zachary McDonald of Bricklayers Local 1.
McConnell said unions would never accept the loss of any worker to jobsite hazards “as merely the price of doing business.”
“We gather today, on Workers Memorial Day, to remember our fallen brothers, to re-center ourselves, to recognize that our work advocating for the safety of our members will never be done and to remind one another, even though we belong to different trades, the safety of our members depends on every member of every trade performing their job safely,” he said.
– Michael Moore, UA editor
Union Advocate 