UNIONS PLAN PERMANENT WORKERS MEMORIAL

Friday, May 2, 2008

(PAI)UNIONS PLAN PERMANENT WORKERS MEMORIAL
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

   SILVER SPRING, Md. (PAI)--One day soon, the late
Larry Bevis, an American Federation of Teachers member
from Birmingham, Ala., will be remembered forever.

   That’s because Bevis’ name, thanks to his union, will
be one the first to be inscribed in the brickwork of
the permanent Workers Memorial to be erected on the
grounds of the National Labor College/George Meany
Center in Silver Spring, Md.

   Bevis died two years ago. His name will join those
of thousands of other workers who have died on the
job, starting with the Haymarket massacre by Chicago
police in 1886. The names will be reminders that
toiling for a living, as one speaker at the April 28
candlelit memorial ceremony said, can still be at
times “dirty, dangerous…deadly.”

   Bevis’ job wasn’t dirty, but it was dangerous: It
cost him his life. He was a classified employee and
member of AFT Local 2143 at Chalkville Elementary
School and, the unionist reading his name said, “He
was struck and killed by a speeding vehicle wile
performing duties of a school crossing guard.”

   Bevis’ name and story was one of dozens read at this
week’s candlelit groundbreaking for the memorial,
which was forced indoors by heavy rain. Others
included the Haymarket workers--including those
wrongly convicted--Operating Engineers, Electrical
Workers, Elevator Constructors, Communications
Workers, Steel Workers and Mine Workers. CWA Safety
and Health Director Dave LaGrande reminded the crowd
of the 9/11 victims, including one unnamed Newspaper
Guild member, who died when the terrorists destroyed
the World Trade Center.

   All of them and more will be honored by the memorial,
to be financed by union and individual contributions.
It will feature individual bricks honoring individual
workers who died on the jobs and benches from the
unions that honor groups of workers.

   The reading of the names and how they died came on
the 19th annual Workers Memorial Day, commemorating
the enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health
Act. Unions held similar observances in cities from
coast to coast. The ceremonies honored the 5,480
workers killed on the job in 2006--the latest year for
which data are available--and tens of thousands who
were injured.

   But the D.C. ceremony was not just reading names and
lighting candles. It took its cue from the late Mary
Harris “Mother” Jones, the famed pro-worker organizer
and agitator who lived nearby: “Pray for the dead and
fight like hell for the living!”

   LaGrande remembered “the recovery workers and cleanup
workers” who came to “Ground Zero” from all over the
nation after the attacks. Many of them are
sickening--and dying--from cancers and respiratory
illnesses contracted from inhaling the combination of
pulverized cement, asbestos, jet fuel and toxic
chemicals while working on “The Pile.” They’re also
struggling with Bush government indifference and
hostility even though, as another speaker said, they
“inhaled Drano” while working on the job.

   Their struggle was one of many that speakers reminded
the crowd about--and also, as AFL-CIO Executive Vice
President Arlene Holt-Baker said, one big reason for
labor’s heavy involvement in this year’s political
campaign: To elect a Congress that will strengthen
worker safety and health law and a president who will
enforce it.

   Meantime, the toll of deaths and injuries continues;
so did the remembrances.

   “Last year, we lost 36 so far from traumatic injury
or poisonings,” added Steel Workers Safety and Health
Director Mike Wright. “This year, it’s 22 so far.”

   And that’s not counting the injured survivors, many
of whom he interviews in post-accident probes.
“They’re all heroes,” he said of the dad and injured.
“Not because they lost their lives. Their lives were
taken and ripped away from them. But because they got
up and went to work in a job that was dirty, dangerous
and ultimately deadly. Heroism is common, but we
don’t notice it until it comes to the level of
tragedy.”

   And one participant read a poem by Ironworker Local
396 Bob Carroll Jr. of St. Louis, entitled, “The
Wall.” One verse concluded: :You might ride the
cloud-covered beam to a heavenly dream--Or ride the
express ball to hell.”

   There was one bright note, showing how union
contracts can protect workers from death and injury: A
rousing song by International Longshore and Warehouse
Union member Harry Stamper, entitled We Just Come To
Work Here; We Don’t Come To Die. Stamper, of Coos
Bay, wrote it after his boss ordered him to undertake
a potentially deadly log-rolling assignment, he
refused, was disciplined, ILWU filed a grievance for
him--and they won.

   Still, the predominant mood at the ceremony was not
just of memory but of the need to fight on. “None of
us are compensated enough to risk our lives and our
health,” Holt-Baker said.

   For details on how to buy a brick at the memorial
($125), or slate pavers ($2,000) commemorating
historic workplace tragedies, such as the Sago mine
disaster, or whole categories of fallen workers via
the granite benches ($10,000), contact the college at
(301) 431-5406.
###