Maine
Opinion: On Workers’ Memorial Day, remember Maine workers whose jobs claimed their lives
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Galen Blanton is the regional administrator for the Occupational Security and Well being Administration in Boston.
In December 2018, Alan Loignon went to work like he did many instances earlier than. A roofer for a Saco contractor, he was putting in roofing tiles at a Portland worksite when he fell and suffered deadly accidents.
An investigation later discovered that, had his employer ensured fall security precautions have been in place, the 30-year-old Loignon would have returned house on the finish of his workday.
Annually, hundreds of employees of all ages die needlessly, leaving their households, mates and communities to grieve when required security and well being requirements are ignored. In 2020, about 5,000 employees died within the U.S. in work-related deaths, together with many who succumbed to office publicity to COVID-19. Tens of hundreds extra die of work-related illnesses.
In Maine in 2020, 20 employees misplaced their lives. On common, 13 employees die every day within the U.S.
The injuries suffered by these left behind are deepened by the truth that almost all, if not all, of those office deaths have been avoidable — if solely employers had established and ensured that applicable security precautions are adopted.
Annually, on April 28 on Staff Memorial Day, the U.S. Division of Labor’s Occupational Security and Well being Administration and office security advocates throughout the nation keep in mind these whose lives ended due to the work they did.
The COVID-19 pandemic made going to work riskier than ever earlier than, significantly in industries the place folks — usually low-wage employees, a lot of whom are girls and folks of coloration — carried out important work to guard us and guarantee our well-being. These in industries similar to well being care, meatpacking, public transportation, retail and meals service risked — and lots of misplaced — their lives offering essential providers to others and supporting themselves and their households.
This present day permits us to mourn the lack of these employees and the way their absence impacts those that shared their lives. They have been our members of the family, our mates, our co-workers and our neighbors. We’re diminished by their deaths.
Staff Memorial Day reminds us that, like life, office security and well being must not ever be taken as a right. These tragedies and the causes ought to encourage us all to demand that office security be a truth of life and by no means an afterthought.
We should try to make sure security and well being requirements are in place and that they’re understood and adopted by employers and employees alike. Staff have the proper to secure and healthful workplaces, and employers have the authorized obligation to make sure that they supply them.
OSHA professionals work daily to help employers throughout the nation of their efforts to offer a secure and healthful office. Our compliance help outreach helps companies using greater than 1.3 million U.S. employees nationwide to stop office accidents and diseases. Via strategic alliances with giant employers, commerce associations, organized labor and our Voluntary Safety Packages, we assist to empower companies to make use of personalized security and well being approaches and make significant and substantial enhancements.
As of April 2022, there have been 10 Voluntary Safety Packages’ contributors in Maine. Damage and sickness information collected at VPP websites exhibits that — on common — damage and sickness charges at these places are about 50 p.c or decrease than the nationwide averages for his or her industries.
On the nationwide stage, OSHA maintains federal requirements for office security, together with particular rules primarily based upon widespread trade dangers and office hazards. In response to the pandemic, the company applied short-term requirements to guard essentially the most susceptible employees and labored with particular industries to fight the unfold of the virus.
Presently, OSHA is growing an infectious illness normal that can shield employees from airborne infectious illnesses, in addition to different viruses that exist right now and people we might face.
Staff are the spine of our nationwide financial system. Within the final two years, we realized how America’s society and tradition rely on individuals who go to work and the way we should always by no means take as a right these keen to work at tough and, generally harmful, jobs. We at OSHA know we should do extra to make sure we assist shield each employee and take heed to their issues for security, no matter pores and skin coloration, language spoken, citizenship standing, gender or age.
We should do extra to compel our nation’s employers to commit themselves to guard their employees’ security and well being, irrespective of the fee. And we should maintain these employers who select revenue over folks’s security accountable for his or her inactions — because the legislation permits and on the money register.
As we mark one other Staff Memorial Day, do not forget that no employee ought to ever need to danger
their life in change for his or her paycheck. Additionally do not forget that every of us has a task to play in making the office secure. We owe Alan Loignon, and the tens of hundreds of others we honor right now not less than that a lot.