Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970, promising every worker the right to a safe job. Working people and their unions have fought to make that promise real, winning life-saving protections and forcing employers to take safety more seriously. Those victories have saved countless lives and prevented numerous injuries.
But the fight isn’t over. Every single day, roughly 385 U.S. workers die from work-related injuries and illnesses. And these usually aren’t freak accidents. They are often preventable tragedies caused by employers cutting corners, politicians refusing to act, or regulators not being staffed or empowered to do the work.
As we commemorate Workers Memorial Day on April 28, we should honor the lives lost and remember the damage done. And we must recommit ourselves to the fight for safer jobs.
Here in Alabama, workers face some of the most dangerous conditions, with some of the weakest protections, anywhere in the world’s advanced economies. While other states have expanded safety standards, Alabama still refuses to extend basic OSHA protections to more than 300,000 state and local government workers. That means folks who fix our roads, care for our children and keep our public services running can be sent into unsafe conditions without legal recourse.
And it’s not just public workers. The state’s political leadership too often has prioritized corporate profits over human lives. Alabama’s weak enforcement and lax regulations leave working people exposed to toxic chemicals, extreme heat, dangerous equipment, fatal falls and punishing hours.
In one horrific example, an OSHA investigation of a 2023 fatal incident at a Phenix City sawmill “revealed, for the second time in three years, that the employer could have prevented a tragedy by following required safety rules.” The man, who gave 20 years to the company, suffered a gruesome death.
Our state government has only one person tasked with enforcing child labor laws, despite the risks facing children in the workplace. That understaffing is even more shocking given that we know children have been found to be illegally working in dangerous conditions in Alabama.
How many more stories of workplace injury and illness will we never know?
Behind every statistic is a community forever changed. Children grow up without a parent. Spouses are burdened with grief and medical debt. Families are hollowed out by preventable loss. The human cost of unsafe work ripples far beyond the job site.
But there is a proven solution: unions. Unionized workers are significantly more likely to have safer workplaces, the power to speak up with less fear of retaliation, and the strength to negotiate for better conditions. Workers in states with so-called “right-to-work” laws have a 56 percent greater risk of dying on the job than workers in states without these laws.
Through collective bargaining, shop-floor organizing and political advocacy, unions have led the way in winning standards like heat protections, hazard pay, rest breaks, fire exits, ongoing training and proper safety equipment. A strong labor movement means safer jobs for all workers – union and non-union alike – by raising standards across industries and communities.
If our elected officials care about working families, they need to act. That means passing laws that protect all workers, regardless of where they live or for whom they work. It means giving OSHA and other safety agencies the resources and authority to do their job. It means defending institutions like the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Mine Safety and Health Administration against attempts to gut their budgets or erase their missions.
The White House is aggressively slashing funding and enforcement, putting workers in greater danger of reckless employers. If companies and politicians want to show their commitment to our health and safety, they should stop contributing to the barriers to unionization that keep so many Southern workers from having a voice on the job.
Workers shouldn’t have to risk their lives just to put food on the table. We must reject the idea that dangerous jobs are just part of life in the South.
Alabama’s workers deserve the same dignity, protections and enforcement as workers anywhere else. On this Workers Memorial Day and beyond, we should follow the words of fearless union organizer Mother Jones: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”
