Sounds and Silence: Workers Memorial Day

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.seiu.org/mt/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=1&tag=workers%20memorial%20day&limit=20

By Kate Thomas on April 30, 2009 12:48 PM
In 2008, one of SEIU Local 1021's members was killed on the job: James Strickland, a BART structures inspector, was hit by a train he didn't see coming because BART wasn't keeping brush and tree branches cleared away from the tracks.

Every April 28, the international labor movement stops to commemorate the lives and sacrifices of workers who never made it home, and to renew the struggle for safer and healthier workplaces. It's a day for speaking up as well as moments of silence. According to the U.S. Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than four million workers were injured on the job and nearly 6,000 were killed by injuries due to job-site hazards in 2007 alone. Thousands more died of job-related diseases.