Workers Memorial Day Statement by New York State AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento

Albany, NY—On Workers Memorial Day, we pause to remember and honor the workers who lost their lives on the job. We also reaffirm our unwavering promise to fight to improve workplace safety.

Workers have a fundamental right to a safe job as promised on April 28, 1971, when the Occupational Safety and Health Act was enacted.

The Trump administration's rapid rollbacks and repeals of workplace safety protections threaten that fundamental right. The union movement is united in our fight to restore these reckless cutbacks.

We pride ourselves on prioritizing workplace safety in New York State.

Like clockwork, some in Washington are again targeting the Scaffold Safety Law, which is unique to New York. This law ensures that construction workers, who are doing one of the most dangerous jobs in America, remain safe by requiring contractors and project owners to provide and utilize necessary safety equipment. This law must remain in place. Lives depend on it.

We have another unique opportunity to improve worker safety as state leaders move closer to finalizing the state budget. We strongly support proposals that would enhance the safety of workers who maintain our state’s infrastructure. These include measures that would make the work zone camera program permanent and increase criminal penalties for assaulting transportation workers.

In addition, we are urging lawmakers to pass the Temperature Extreme Mitigation Program (TEMP) Act, which would reduce the risk of injury or illness due to climate and temperature extremes. It would require common-sense steps by employers, including access to personal protective equipment, hydration and shade, adequate rest periods, health monitoring, and other appropriate steps for unique worksite circumstances.

We also need improved enforcement for public employee violence prevention. Public employers should be required to assess potential workplace violence and implement a written violence prevention program. Penalties and stronger enforcement options should also be available.

As part of our commitment to fight for the living, we strongly support an essential measure to protect injured workers from exploitation by greedy insurance carriers. Currently, carriers can stop paying wage replacement benefits to injured workers who have already proven their cases by claiming that they have voluntarily withdrawn from the labor market by failing to seek a new job, despite their injury. This bill will ensure that workers who prove their workplace injuries and who cannot return to their previous positions because of those injuries continue to receive the wage replacement benefits they need to help make ends meet while they heal.

No worker should lose their life or become ill while performing their job, and no family should have to grieve the loss of a loved one due to preventable and avoidable hazardous working conditions. We can and we must do better.