National Day of Mourning marked with workplace safety top of mind

By Herald on April 28, 2021.

Herald photo by Al Beeber - Flags fly at half mast in front of City Hall Wednesday.

Tim Kalinowski  – LETHBRIDGE HERALD –  tkalinowski@lethbridgeherald.com

Flags flew at half-mast at Lethbridge city hall, and groups across the province commemorated those workers who died on the job in the province in 2020 for the annual National Day of Mourning on Wednesday.

Former city employee, retired CUPE Local 70 chief shop steward, and dedicated workers’ rights advocate Burt Green, as always on the National Day of Mourning, made his way down to the union’s worker memorial in Mountain View Cemetery to mourn and honour those who have died on the job– which sadly in Alberta totalled 150 workers in 2020.

“I lost my wife in 2015, but I got to say goodbye to her,” Green explains. “And I speak for the ones (on the National Day of Mourning) who didn’t get that opportunity to say goodbye to a loved one. They send them off to work, and look to see them at the end of the day. Sometimes that just doesn’t happen. And that was 150 times in 2020.”

Green says previous generations fought hard to ensure safer workplaces and enshrine the consideration for workers’ safety in government legislation.

But the battle goes on, he says, and the safety of workers should never be taken for granted.

“It’s not just a fight of the past,” Green says. “It’s a fight of the present too. And for the future. I think if things are going pretty well people tend to forget about certain things. People need to know their history. You have to be aware at all times of worker safety, and this could happen to anyone.”

The Alberta Federation of Labour echoed this comment by Green in its own National Day of Mourning release to the media on Wednesday, particularly in relation to increasing cases of COVID-19 in workplaces across the province.

“Jason Kenney and his UCP government have gone to great lengths to deny that the virus is being spread in Alberta workplaces,” says Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour. “But this Day of Mourning, we have to speak truth to power. And the truth is that COVID-19 is a workplace issue. It’s a workplace issue because of the stress and anxiety that frontline workers have been dealing with since the beginning of the pandemic. And it’s a workplace issue because, as a result of the arrival (of) more transmissible variants of the virus, workplaces have become a key driver of infection. We won’t be able to get a handle on the third wave, and we won’t be able to keep working Albertans safe, until the government acknowledges this fact and takes action on it.”

It called on the Kenney government to immediately embrace a zero-Covid strategy and return to first wave paid stay at home leave for all non-essential workers during the pandemic, paid sick leave for all workers infected with the disease, recognize COVID-19 as an official “workplace hazard,” mandate better PPE, mandate proper ventilation in indoor workspaces, temporarily close workplaces which have COVID outbreaks, prioritize vaccination of essential workers, set up mobile COVID vaccination at all workplace COVID hotspots, reduce class sizes, and to rigorously enforce all public health orders to ensure compliance from employers.

Alberta NDP Labour and Immigration critic Christina Gray also released a statement to mark the National Day of Mourning on behalf of her party.

“Workplace safety must be paramount to everyone, to ourselves, our coworkers, our friends, and our families,” she says. “It’s about coming home safely at the end of each work day. Even one death in a workplace, from accident or occupational disease, is one too many. Today is the National Day of Mourning, a day for us to remember those we have lost to workplace-related illness or injury. Last year, we saw 150 work-related fatalities in Alberta, including some resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, our hearts are with all Albertans dealing with the grief from a workplace fatality or accident.”

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