The Sudbury and District Labor does not accept that thousands of workers die each year, and hundreds of thousands more are injured or sick as a result of their jobs, the organization’s president said.
Jessica Montgomery, president of the Sudbury and District Labor Council, hosted this year’s National Day of Mourning at Laurentian University.
Now an international observance as a day of mourning for workers killed, injured or sick on the job, the declaration of April 28 as the Day of Mourning began here in 1984 when unions adopted the day to publicly acknowledge injuries, illnesses and deaths
“The standing call on April 28 to mourn the dead and fight for the living remains relevant and urgent, especially with the pandemic,” Montgomery said.
It has been just over two years since the World Health Organization declared the global COVID-19 pandemic, and in that time there have been more than 3.5 million COVID-19 cases and 37,728 deaths, it said.
Meanwhile, workers continue to be injured, sick or killed due to unsafe working conditions and a variety of hazards, he said.
“Three years ago, the international labor organization recognized occupational safety and health as a fundamental right at work, but it is still valid,” he said. “In those three years, more than nine million people have died from their jobs, and many more are now living with life-altering illnesses or injuries because their employer failed to protect them.”
In Canada, workers’ compensation boards acknowledge about 1,000 worker deaths per year, “and we know that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Montgomery said.
In 2019, the most recent year for which statistics are available, there were 925 accepted workplace fatalities and 271,806 accepted lost-time injury claims.
“These are only a fraction of the actual number,” Montgomery said. “We do not accept that thousands of workers are dying and hundreds of thousands more are injured or sick each year as a result of their jobs. Health and safety should be a priority in the workplace, not an occasional afterthought
In 2020, the CBC reported on a cluster of occupational illnesses that emerged among former Neelon Casting employees. The company operated for more than 30 years in Sudbury, closing in 2007.
One of those employees is Daryl Park. He is now retired, but recalled various stories from his days at Neelon Casting.
During its operation, Neelon employed more than 2,000 unionized employees and many employees and managers, Park said. It enjoyed quite a bit of success. At one point, he made all the rotors in North America for Mercedes-Benz, right here in Sudbury.
“We were very proud of that,” he said.
It is the working conditions in foundries that are the dark side of the story, he said.
“I have visited numerous foundries over the years, and they all have a number of things in common: They are dusty, dirty and very hot places to work,” he said. “The work is laborious, heavy and monotonous.”
There were a lot of health and safety issues, he said. For example, in the core room, where internal sand cores for foundries were made, the materials used in this process involved gases that caused numerous headaches for employees.
Park said that after working their shifts, they would see blue halos around the lights for several days, and his wife and friends would often ask him about the smell coming off of it. They were the gases escaping from his body.
Headaches and fatigue were common. Workers often fell asleep on the job, she said. In fact, CO2 levels in one of their stores were found to exceed 1,000 parts per million (PPM), well above the acceptable level of 250 parts per million, and that in a one-hour period, when we were working in eight-hour shifts, he said. saying.
He was moved to tell the story of someone who died because he worked at Neelon.
“I’ve seen a lot of my coworkers die prematurely in their 50s and 60s, even in their 40s,” he said. Tony, who worked in our central ward for six years, at the age of 28, developed terminal cancer and died within a year. All the doctors told his wife was that it was work related. No compensation ever came, and she was left alone with her three-year-old son.
“Years later, that young man came into the program I was teaching at Cambrian College and asked me if I had ever worked with his dad. It was a privilege to tell him that his father was a wonderful worker and much loved by those he worked with.”
Andréane Chénier is a national specialist health and safety representative for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
Chénier said deaths from occupational illnesses outnumber traumatic deaths in each of the past 10 years and many more work-related illnesses and deaths go unreported.
This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the Westray mine disaster and 18 years since the implementation of the Westray bill.
“Those law changes are intended to protect workers from preventable workplace injuries and illnesses, and act as a deterrent, imposing harsh consequences on companies that failed to meet their duty of care,” he said.
In the 18 years since then, these changes should have made a difference, yet around 1,000 Canadian workers are killed each year, he said.
“That consistency really hasn’t changed, and in Canada, we’re not doing any better since the Westray bill went into effect. In fact, we are doing worse.”
But how do we change this in the future?
“Workers cannot afford deliberate ignorance,” he said. “Work shouldn’t hurt. When it happens, we must search, find and face the challenges to find solutions.”
Reference-www.sudbury.com