In Memoriam – for all those who have been killed at work

Saturday 28^th April was International Workers’ Memorial Day.  Yet most people remained blissfully unaware of the day, or the number of workers in Wales that lose their lives because of their jobs.

Last year, eleven people died at work in Wales and in the last five years, 57 people in Wales have suffered fatal injuries at work.

Death and injury at work loom large in Wales’s history, from the numerous mining disasters of the past, some of which saw hundreds of people killed, to the less visible but nevertheless high number of deaths in agriculture, fishing and quarrying. The tragedy at Gleision last year was a reminder for many of the horrors of the past.

Yet despite the way that workers’ deaths have shaped Wales’s past and continue even today, there is precious little to show that we remember them. Some trades unions marked the International Workers’ Memorial Day with rallies and so on, but it was just a day – soon over and forgotten.

It is surely time for a permanent memorial for all Welsh workers.  Some sites of past disasters have memorials, such as Senghenydd  and Gresford, but there is nothing to mark the lives of the many others who have died at work, all too often with barely a mention in the local press.  A permanent workers’ memorial would show our respects to all these workers, and it would also be a salutary reminder of the importance of much-maligned health and safety.

It’s the fifth anniversary of the 2007 Corporate Manslaughter Act this year – how good it would be for the Welsh Government to announce, this year, that it was establishing a permanent memorial – to be revealed in 2014, the 40^th anniversary of the Health and Safety at Work Act.

We have submitted a petition to the National Assembly for Wales to commission a permanent memorial to Wales’s Workers. The petition will soon be live and available here – please show your support!