International Workers’ Memorial Day: remember the dead, fight for the living

By Left Horizons reporters

Every year, on April 28, trade unions, trades councils and the TUC commemorate International Workers’ Memorial Day, marking the fact that every day thousands of workers are injured, seriously maimed or killed in work-related accidents. Thousands more die from illnesses contracted through having worked with inadequate protection with dangerous substances.

Over many decades, going back to the nineteenth century, when trade unions were in their infancy, it has been the organisation of workers into unions that has led the way in the fight for safe workplaces. If workplaces today are far removed from the horrendous conditions of nineteenth century industry, it has only been because of union action. Not a single concession on health and safety has ever been made without union action.

And it has been as a result of trade unions again, this time projecting their aspirations onto the political plain, that legislation has been passed over the years to provide for minimum standards of safety at in the workplace and to establish rights for workers.

But, as useful as legislation might be, the only real guarantee of workers’ safety at work are strong and militant trade unions organised in the workplaces. It is clear is from the grim statistics that are released every year that many employers still give little or no priority to workers’ safety and Health and Safety regulations are frequently flouted by bosses who they think they can get away with it.

This is the grim record for the last full year for which there is data, from March 2022 to March 2023:

• 1.8 million workers suffering from work-related ill health (new or longstanding cases).
• 875,000 existing and new cases of workplace stress, anxiety and depression.
• 561,000 workers suffering a workplace non-fatal injury.
• 473,00 workers suffering from a musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) – almost identical to that seen in 2021/2022 (477,000 cases).
• 12,000 lung disease deaths linked to past occupational exposure which includes 2,268 deaths due to mesothelioma (2021).
• 60,645 injuries reported under RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations)
• A total of 35.2 million working days lost due to workplace ill health and injury with a total estimated cost to the economy of £20.7 billion.
• 135 workplace fatalities, though deaths linked to both Covid-19 and lung disease are excluded.

Even where there is legislation, under a Tory government at the beck and call of business sharks and profiteers, there is precious little attention paid to the enforcement of safety laws. Last May, the TUC noted, there was a 200-fold increase (between 2016/17 and 2021/22) in the number of investigations cancelled by the Health and Safety Executive, the body mandated by law to investigate accidents at work.

Remember the dead, fight for the living

The trade union, Prospect, which organises many of the HSE inspectors, revealed details in its report, HSE under pressure: a perfect storm, of the downgrading of the HSE by the Tories and the decline in expenditure on investigations and the enforcement of health and safey law.  By 2020-21, for example, expenditure in real terms on the HSE executive was down 43%, from £286m to £164m.

Using the HSE’s own figures, the report showed that in 2016/17 there were only two mandatory investigations cancelled because of insufficient resources; but by 2021/22 this had risen to 389. “The bottom line”, Mike Clancy, said Prospect general secretary, “is that if effective investigations cannot be carried out then those who are at fault for an accident may get away with it, depriving victims of justice and making workplaces less safe”.

The TUC has designated this year’s Memorial Day to the theme of climate change. “With last year the hottest year on record, the theme for 2024’s Workers’ Memorial Day” the TUC says, “is the impacts of climate change on occupational health and safety. Death at work and employment disruption as a result of global warming, not to mention occupational illnesses caused by polluting fossil fuels, are rising everywhere, and are only expected to increase”.

Many trade union members and even non-members will be standing in silence in vigils and meetings up and down the country on April 28. That is as it should be. The TUC slogan says “Remember the dead, fight for the living.”

Many activists will take that to heart, in the knowledge that if a “fight” is to mean anything, it must also mean a fight for democratic, militant and proactive trade unions, responsive to their members’ needs in the workplace.