Tuesday, April 28 is Workers Memorial Day, an annual commemoration of working people who died on the job.
Valerie Brown, a fleet service clerk for American Airlines at DFW Airport since 1983, won’t be here to observe the holiday. Neither will Johnny Tamayo, a Letter Carrier in Pasadena who last May celebrated his 50th anniversary delivering mail. Marvin Snowden of Austin, a master mechanic for Capital Metro since 2003, won’t be either.
We mourn these front-line Texas workers who appear on an AFL-CIO “In Memoriam” page for COVID-19 victims around the nation and others who will be added to the list.
Workers Memorial Day commemorates creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a product of bipartisan legislation signed by President Richard M. Nixon on this day in 1970. OSHA was supposed to inspect workplaces proactively and improve safety conditions. Because of an intentional strategy by the current administration to underfund the agency, these days OSHA inspectors usually first show up only after someone has died.
OSHA has left the building during the pandemic. The agency’s sure-fail strategy is to let employers police themselves.
Unfortunately, workers can’t look to Texas for help. Texas remains the only state in the union that does not require employers to carry workers’ compensation coverage, and Texas, unlike many states, has no OSHA at the state level — even for workplaces that statistically are the most dangerous.
In this vacuum, workers watch with dismay as politicians in Austin talk about sacrificing lives to restore the economy. We want the economy back on track and jobs restored as much, if not more, than anyone. But if we bring workers back without proper precautions and safeguards, we risk a much worse pandemic and a much worse economic calamity. Now is no time to compromise on safety.
That is why the Texas labor movement joins in the AFL-CIO’s “Safety First” plan to reopen the economy: 1) Workers have a voice at all levels of the decision making process as our lives are most directly on the line; 2) Decisions about opening the economy should be based on worker safety and sound science; 3) There must be strong, clear and enforceable health and safety standards in workplaces; 4) Workers must have strong protections against retaliation when we report unsafe conditions that threaten our well being; 5) We need to see a massive increase in supply of Personal Protective Equipment to stop the spread of infection; 6) Massive increase of rapid and reliable coronavirus testing over the current inadequate levels.
In addition, we must ensure that all working Texans, including immigrants now shamefully excluded from any assistance, are able to work safely and survive economically. The virus doesn’t check anybody’s papers before infection.
Many of us have thanked front-line employees who are risking their health and lives to serve the public. Yet talk can be cheap. To take our gratitude a step further, we need policies that honor front-line workers’ service and protect them from harm. Let’s go the distance on safe workplaces, expand Medicaid so millions of working families gain access to health insurance, and, yes, honor the dignity of all work through and beyond the pandemic.
On this Workers Memorial Day, we honor the memory of COVID-19 victims by fighting together to make sure the list doesn’t grow longer. That is how we can really say thank you.
Editor's Note: The author of the above guest column is Rick Levy, president of the Texas AFL-CIO. Texas AFL-CIO is a state labor federation consisting of 240,000 affiliated union members who advocate for working families in Texas.
Editor’s Note: The main image accompanying the above guest column shows a cake baked in honor of Johnny Tamayo’s 50 years of service as a mayor in Pasadena, Texas, for the United States Postal Service. He was honored in July, 2019. In addition to being a full-time carrier, he owned and operated his own grocery store and restaurant for 20 years. He died recently after contracting COVID-19.
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