(Message from PACE International Union President Boyd Young, from April issue of The Pacesetter)

Mourn for the Dead, Fight for the Living

ON APRIL 28, 1999, THE TENTH anniversary of Workers Memorial Day, unions and our allies all across the country will pause to remember working people who have died on the job. Each year, more than 60,000 U.S. workers die while trying to earn a living and another six million suffer preventable injuries. In 1989, the AFL-CIO unions set aside this day in April to honor those workers, mourn their passing, and reinforce our vow to create safer workplaces for the living. This issue of The PACEsetter centers on those issues.

We chose April 28 as Workers Memorial Day because it is the day the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) was enacted in 1971 and the day of a similar remembrance in Canada. OSHA is one of our most important workplace protections. This legislation literally changed lives. OSHA abolished the attitude that workers assumed the risk of injury by taking a job, established the right to work in a safe, hazard-free workplace and created a federal agency to insure that right.

Some of you may not know an important fact about OSHA. Our former OCAW brothers and sisters led the entire labor movement in the fight for this legislation and won. The OCAW also took the lead on enforcement. OCAW filed the first OSHA complaint under the Act and the final complaint ever issued by OSHA was against OCAW-represented Allied-Chemical in Moundsville, W. Va.

OCAW's legacy on safety and health issues included a six-month national strike against Shell for its failure to follow the oil industry pattern settlement on safety and health contract language. Their legacy also includes the ultimate sacrifice. In 1974, Karen Silkwood, an OCAW member at Kerr-McGee's plutonium fuels production plant in Crescent, Okla. died under suspicious circumstances while gathering evidence for the union's OSHA charge. The circumstances of her death remain under speculation today.

Twenty-five years later, the Karen Silkwood story is a startling reminder of the dirty world of workplace hazards and cover-ups and the continued need for safety protections in the workplace. Karen's tragedy is now a part of the PACE spirit and we must not forget it, especially when OSHA is under attack. Since the Republican Congress was seated in 1994, organized labor has battled an all-out assault on job safety and health protections, including legislation that would undermine OSHA's fundamental structure. Business interests have heavily lobbied against OSHA, despite the %121 billion cost that workplace injuries add to the bottom line each year.

Like Karen, many PACE members have paid the ultimate sacrifice—losing their lives in terrible, senseless, preventable deaths. We remember all of them with pride and devotion, but simply remembering is not enough. We must also honor their legacy by fighting for the living. The first step is to mobilize around Workers Memorial Day. Our centerspread this month details information about this important day and suggests activities for observing it.

With health and safety protections targeted for extinction by anti-union and anti-worker conservatives in Congress, PACE members also need to demonstrate popular support for OSHA and expanded protections for those hazards not yet covered by OSHA. Standards for robotic equipment, ergonomic problems, and certain chemical hazards do not exist at this writing. Write and call your elected representatives. Check out the AFL-CIO web site for more information. Make your voice heard. The life you save may be your own.