An Injury to One is an Injury to All!

YCL-LJC Central Executive Committee, 28 April 2021

April 28th marks the Workers’ Day of Mourning in Canada and the World Day for Safety and Health at Work. To mourn for the fallen is to fight for the living. The YCL-LJC expresses solidarity with all workers of the world, who directly or indirectly have paid for employer negligence of health and safety measures at the workplace. 

Every day around the world more than 6300 people lose their life due to occupational “accidents”, the vast majority of which are crimes of the employers’. Annually, more than 2.3 million workers die from work-related diseases. Serious injuries can often leave workers destitute or forced to work in pain.   

More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the danger of transmission at the workplace and the effects of the disease are not going away. Avoidable mass workplace outbreaks continue, particularly in logistics and food processing where workers’ fundamental rights are being trampled. 

Young workers are more likely to be injured on the job and they have less work experience, less training, and less agency within their workplaces to call out unsafe work practices. On average in Canada, more than 40 workers under the age of 19 are injured on the job every day. Last June, a 14-year-old in Beauce, Quebec was crushed by the forklift he was driving — he was put in this position by employers, despite the minimum legal age for a forklift operator being 16. Shamefully this tragedy is not an outlier, as the very next month the Alberta United Conservatives introduced Bill 32 making it legal to employ 13- and 14-year-olds without their parents’ permission. 

We are seeing a total disregard for health and safety during the pandemic, especially among racialized and minimum wage workers who have been working during this entire pandemic in grocery stores, pharmacies, warehouses and manufacturing, and food service as well as in the exploitive gig economy jobs. These workers are seen as expendable and not deserving of living wages, equal pay for equal work, or paid sick days and job protection. Capitalism places profits before people, and occupational injuries are an expected cost of business. 

Weakened workers’ compensation programs and labour laws encourage large employers to break the law because of lackadaisical enforcement and inadequate measures. As Young Communists, we need to fight for every reform that helps improve occupational health and safety. We recognise that workers need substantial changes now, starting with a Workers’ Bill of Rights that would include a guaranteed livable income and 14 employer-paid sick days.   

Finally, we express our solidarity with workers at the port of Montreal. We point out the brutality of the Federal Government in legislating Montreal dockworkers back to work this week. These workers, without contract since 2018, are fighting against an extension in their workday put in place without their consultation. It is known that occupational fatigue is a leading cause of preventable accidents. Montreal dock workers are members of the Syndicat canadien de la fonction publique – Canadian Union of Public Employees, the very union that first marked April 28th as a Day for Mourning and launched the worldwide commemoration. 

Solidarity!