HARTFORD, CT – Labor leaders and elected officials gathered Sunday at the state capitol to remember workers who lost their lives on the job and to pledge to continue the fight to improve working conditions for laborers.
Workers Memorial Day ceremony is held every April 28, said Shellye Davis, Secretary-Treasurer of the Connecticut AFL-CIO.
“It’s a day when working families, union members, and elected officials come together to remember each worker killed, injured, and sickened from their jobs,” Davis said. “But it is also to organize for an end to the unnecessary deaths of our brothers and sisters.”
Nationally, nearly 5 ,500 workers were killed on the job in 2022. An estimated 120,000 workers died from occupational diseases, she said.
“That’s 344 workers dying each day from an on-the-job injury or illness. And workers of color die on the job at a higher rate compared with all other workers.”
According to the AFL-CIO Health and Safety Committee, 34 Connecticut workers lost their lives from workplace injuries and illness in 2022.
US Sen. Richard Blumenthal spoke about his lifelong support of unions and the challenges that workers continue to face in some of the most challenging fields.
“No one should doubt that the reason that we have worker safety laws are unions. The reason why we have enforcement of worker safety laws are the unions. And the reason why we will have better enforcement is because of unions. They make us strong,” he said.
Blumenthal then turned his attention to a modern problem concerning firefighters –the use of per- and poly-fluorinated substances (PFAS), commonly known as forever chemicals. PFAS are known carcinogens and have been used both in the foam that firefighters use to douse fires, and in the gear they use to protect themselves from extreme heat and smoke.
“Now we have toxic chemicals in the places where firefighters go to rescue people when there are fires. Those toxic chemicals are a bigger danger now in many ways than the other kinds of physical threats that are more visible, because they cause invisible wounds and diseases that manifest years later. So we have our job cut out for us. To make sure that the cancer and the diabetes and the hypertension, all those effects of those toxic chemicals are stopped. Whether it’s PFAS or any other kinds of chemicals,” he said.
The event came five days after the 37th anniversary of the collapse of the L’Ambiance Plaza, one of the deadliest labor accidents in modern Connecticut’s history. A method of construction known as lift-slab construction failed, causing seven completed floors of the structure to collapse inwards. 28 construction workers were killed in the accident, and 22 more were injured. A moratorium on lift-slab construction was instituted across the state until 1994, when the federal government introduced new safety guidelines for the process.
Attorney General William Tong delivered the keynote address where he referenced the L’Ambiance Plaza disaster in making the case for continued union support.
“It’s hard to begin this conversation without, as Senator Blumenthal said, remembering the people at L’Ambiance. I was just there a few days ago, as we go every year, 37 years now running, to remember how 28 people tragically and suddenly died at a construction site in Bridgeport because the owners and the people who were in charge did not take care to be sure that it was a safe workplace for the workers, and they focused on the money. For them it was all about the money and that’s why people died.”
The other main point the speakers drove home on Sunday was the continuing, devastating effects of the opioid epidemic on working people. Kyle Zimmer, co-chair of the AFL-CIO’s Health and Safety Committee, gave a live demonstration of how to administer naloxone, an emergency treatment for opioid overdose, from the podium as he noted that construction laborers have a higher incidence of addiction due to the injuries they sustain on the job.
“There’s a national effort to get Naloxone on every construction site in the country. I can honestly say right now Connecticut’s leading that charge. Since the first of this year, we have distributed over 2,000 of these kits,” he said. “The point of Naloxone is getting it into the community. Not to have it sit in a warehouse, not to spend the opioid overdose money. It’s to get it in the hands of people that can save lives.”
The event also served as an awards ceremony. State Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, won the Legislative Award for his service, and he spoke about the need to continually push to protect workers.
“The fight that we fight in this building is never over. Just because you have success at one point, be assured that people will come back and try to take away your protections,” he said. “I’ll give you an example. I got elected in 2019, and one of the first bills that I saw was that they wanted to bring asbestos back into manufacturing.”
Anwar continued: “I literally looked at the bill and looked at the calendar and said, ‘did I go in another world and go back to the 1960s?’ And when I started to have this conversation, the people said ‘it’s a safe asbestos.’ I said, ‘I have seen more people die from mesothelioma in the state of Connecticut than anybody else has.'”
The ceremony also awarded scholarships to five high school seniors who will continue their education:
- Amy Morrissey, Naugatuck High School- 1st Place
- Ngoc Khanh Dang, St. Thomas More High School- 2nd Place
- Sam Cooper, Stamford High School- 3rd Place
- Madison Calandriello, Fairfield Warde High School- 4th Place (tie)
- Brian Gomez, Francis T. Maloney High School- 4th Place (tie)
