International Workers Memorial Day 2009

April 28 is International Workers Memorial Day. This is a day for honoring the loss of workers worldwide who are injured and killed on the job as well as those who suffer injury or sickness due to unsafe working conditions, industrial accidents and abusive management practices.

It is also a time to rededicate ourselves to the struggles for workplace safety and health, for environmental protection, for just compensation, medical coverage for all and protection for immigrant workers who often receive the most dangerous and deadly jobs or are forced to work without even basic safety tools, equipment, and training.

The International Labour Organization, the international body of the United Nations that addresses issues of work and workers rights released a report yesterday that reveals key facts about workers safety and health worldwide:

• The ILO estimates that each year about 2.3 million men and women die from work-related accidents and diseases including close to 360,000 fatal accidents and an estimated 1.95 million fatal work-related diseases.

• This means that by the end of this day nearly 1 million workers will suffer a workplace accident, and around 5,500 workers will die due to an accident or disease from their work.

• In economic terms it is estimated that roughly four per cent of the annual global Gross Domestic Product, or US$1.25 trillion, is siphoned off by direct and indirect costs of occupational accidents and diseases such as lost working time, workers’ compensation, the interruption of production and medical expenses.

• Hazardous substances cause an estimated 651,000 deaths, mostly in the developing world. These numbers may be greatly under-estimated due to inadequate reporting and notification systems in many countries.

• Data from a number of industrialized countries show that construction workers are three to four times more likely than other workers to die from accidents at work.

• Occupational lung disease in mining and related industries arising from asbestos, coal and silica exposure is still a concern in developed and developing countries. Asbestos alone claims about 100,000 deaths every year and the figure is rising annually.