[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Page 10835]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          WORKERS MEMORIAL DAY

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, today is Workers Memorial Day, which has 
been established for many years in this country, a day when we honor 
injured workers. It is a day that is particularly important for the 
families of some 5,000 Americans every year who are killed on the job. 
It is hard to believe that in our country that is about 100 workers a 
week. Some 15 workers every single day in our country are killed in a 
workplace accident, some of them union, most of them nonunion workers, 
workers who say goodbye to their spouse or to their children or to 
their mother or father and go off to work expecting just another day at 
the job and they never come home.
  Workers are killed in all kinds of construction accidents. That 
number of 5,000--some 5,500, actually, in the year 2007--does not even 
count people who die from workplace acquired diseases, workers who 
might be sickened by Diacetyl, the popcorn lung disease that workers in 
Ohio have contracted.
  Today, under the chairmanship of Senator Murray, the Health, 
Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held a hearing to commemorate 
Workers Memorial Day: Dr. Celeste Monforton, Jim Frederick, and Tammy 
Miser. Tammy Miser's brother was killed on the job, I believe, in 
Indiana. The three of them talked about how important Workers Memorial 
Day is. But, more importantly, they talked about how important it is 
that workers have better representation than provided by the 
Occupational Safety and Health Administration; that the families of 
victims or workers injured or killed on the job don't have the input 
into the Occupational Safety and Health Administration they should 
have. In fact, those workers complain--as did people who represented 
them today at this committee hearing--that too often during the last 
few years there has been a voluntary kind of compliance through OSHA, 
and voluntary compliance doesn't work to save lives and make the 
workplace safer. So I applaud what Secretary Solis is doing, and I 
applaud what Senator Murray is doing.
  I close with this: One of my first Workers Memorial Days was in 
Lorraine, OH, arranged by local labor organizations. I was given this 
pin I wear. It is a depiction of a canary in a bird cage. The mine 
workers, as we know, 100 years ago used to take a canary down in the 
mines with them. If it died from lack of oxygen or toxic gas, the miner 
knew he had to get out of the mine immediately. In those days there 
were no unions strong enough to protect them, and they had no 
government that cared enough to protect them. Those days are behind us.
  Back in 1970, the Occupational Health and Safety Agency was set up by 
the Government. It has made a huge difference, but nonetheless 100 
people in this country show up for work and die on the job every single 
day on the average, and that is not counting workplace diseases.
  So we have a lot of work to do so that by April 28 of next year we 
can commemorate Workers Memorial Day with significantly fewer workplace 
injuries and significantly fewer workplace deaths.
  I yield the floor and thank the President.

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