Sunday 29 April 2012

international workers' memorial day

today is international workers' memorial day.  it's a day to remember those people who have died at work, particularly as a result of poor workplace safety practices.  it's a day to remember those that died at the pike river mine, the security guard charanpreet dhaliwal killed at his first day at work, the bus driver herman curry killed during an attempted burglary, derek lovell killed at the cool store explosion in tamahere, philomen gullard killed in the explosion in a water mains tunnel in onehunga, and so many more.  too many more.

it's also a day to remember those injured at work or general having to work in unsafe situations.   a quick look through the department of labour website shows that pacific workers have a particularly high injury rate:

“Manufacturing is a key area of focus for our work with Pacific Peoples as it accounts for one fifth of the Pacific workforce nationally,” says Vasantha Krishnan, General Manager of the Department’s Labour and Immigration Research Centre.

“These workers are disproportionately represented in injury statistics, accounting for over one-third of the manufacturing sector’s injury claims made to ACC in the 2009-2010 year,” Ms Krishnan says.


there are the appalling conditions faced by workers on foreign charter vessels, first reported by bloomberg and which led to our government putting out this report.

workers deserve to be safe at work.  they should be able to leave work at the end of the day, no worse off physically or emotionally than when they started it.  their policies, procedures and processes required to ensure their safety shouldn't be described as unnecessary bureaucracy or PC gone mad.  we still have a long way to go in keeping workers safe.  let's keep the names above, and others, in our thoughts so that we don't forget how important this is.


on another note, this is the photograph i loved best from the asset sales protest today & i wish i could have been there holding that sign as well:


it was great to see such a large turnout at the protest.  let's hope it makes a difference.

2 comments:

Beerbaron said...

You are kidding.....? 3000...? At a great stretch? What a joke.

That turnout of mainly Lefty rent a mob types shows Kiwis had far better things to do and be worried about than stupid, economically illiterate and xenophobic-racist nonsense like the sale of a tiny fraction of Australian bank owned farmland to the great "yellow peril" that is the Chinese.

stargazer said...

way to show some real ignorance beerbaron, as well as pretty sad condescension. the march had over 10,000, they were protesting the sale of power companies and other state assets amongst other things. but don't let facts get in the way of your bitterness.