Wednesday, 3 May 2023

International Workers Memorial Day

Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (09:54): In the past year 60 Victorians died from work-related incidents. It is a sobering number on paper, but a simple statistic does not do it justice. For every death there is a grieving family, there are friends who will never see a mate again and there are communities changed forever. Many more are seriously injured, suffering amputations and other life-changing trauma. Many of the workers who died in the past 12 months worked in construction, farming, manufacturing or transport. The number is even more shocking when we recognise that workplace death and injury is preventable.

Last Friday we paid our respects to these people and to the grieving families at an event for International Workers Memorial Day run by the Victorian Trades Hall Council. We were privileged to be joined by a garment worker from Bangladesh who spoke of the horrifying ordeal she suffered when the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka collapsed 10 years ago. Her words were incredibly powerful. She spent 18 hours under rubble before being freed, an event most of us could not even imagine. 1138 people who went to work that day never went home.

International Workers Memorial Day serves as a reminder to never take workplace safety for granted and to appreciate all that the labour movement has achieved in fighting for workers rights and safer workplaces. Much like with road safety, we have come a long way, but we still have much to do to ensure that every worker, no matter whether here or abroad, gets home safely to their loved ones at the end of a day’s work.