I will proudly & with deep sadness join the #IWMD20 minute's silence today, for all the workers who have died from Coronavirus, whether on the frontline of health and social care or elsewhere.
I won't for a moment allow sadness to detract from utter fury that many of these people would still be alive today if government & employers had done their single most important job and ensured every single worker had the PPE & working conditions they needed to keep them safe.
TUC: "Every year more people are killed at work than in wars. Most don't die of mystery ailments, or in tragic "accidents". They die because an employer decided their safety just wasn't that important a priority."
This is true every year, but never more so than today. >
This is true every year, but never more so than today. >
As on every April 28th, I will also be paying tribute, remembrance and respect to everyone killed at work over the past 12 months, including the workers in agriculture, construction, mines, factories, merchant navies and everywhere else.
And I ask you to give some thought to the fact that, outside the Coronavirus crisis, 95% of civilian workers killed at work each year are men. The reasons for this are complex but are in large part down to >
> widely shared social values that say men's lives just don't matter that much; that excessive risk-taking should be thought of as courage, and that a willingness to face danger & death should be considered an essential marker of masculinity.
So please do pay respects at 11am to everyone who has lost their lives to their employment. Do not let that obscure the truth that most of them died because someone, somewhere found it more profitable or convenient to let them face the risks than to keep them alive.
