Workers Memorial day

SATURDAY - 8:30 a.m.
APRIL 26, 2008
ALFRED ZAMPA BRIDGE
(formerly Carquinez Bridge - Hwy 80 - if traveling north, take last exit (#27) to Crockett/Port Costa - go .5 miles turning under fwy,
then rt on San Pablo and park near the Dead Fish Restaurant which is located at 20050 San Pablo in Crockett)

WORKERS' MEMORIAL DAY

SPEAKERS
Congressman George Miller

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber
(invited, not yet confirmed)

Art Pulaski, Executive Secy-Treasurer
California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO

Aditi Vaidya, Port Program Director
East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy

On Workers’ Memorial Day we remember the casualties of America’s longest undeclared war: tens of thousands dead and millions wounded - every year. The war isn’t just overseas; it’s here at home and the battleground is the workplace. Nationwide in 2006, more than 1.2 million workers were injured and 5,703 workers killed. Another 50,000 died due to occupational diseases from sources such as toxic chemicals.

Each year in California, 23,000 workers are diagnosed with a chronic, deadly disease caused by workplace chemical exposure, and approximately 6,500 California workers die due to associated chronic diseases. Workers in California are not adequately protected. AB 515 by Assembly Member Sally Lieber will require the OSH Standards Board to make it a priority to issue standards for chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, reproductive or developmental harm, and require those standards be based on health-based data, to the extent feasible. California has data now to set those standards, avoiding duplication of resources and speeding the process -- we should use it. California workers deserve to be protected at work from harmful exposures to the same hazardous substances for which the community is protected in the environment.

Join together to observe WORKERS’ MEMORIAL DAY at the Zampa Memorial Bridge -- help fight for safer working conditions. The bridge represents the dedication of all the men and women who build these monumental projects and reminds us too of those who lose their lives in the process. This is the only bridge in the U.S. named in honor of a blue collar worker. Alfred Zampa was a member of Iron Workers Local 378, and as he said, "Anytime someone got killed on the job, we’d go jittery and go home for the day. We’d wonder, is it our turn next? If we got hurt, we couldn’t get no insurance, no welfare or nothing, until the union came up. I don’t know where I’d be without the union."



WORKER HEALTH & SAFETY:

A RIGHT - NOT A BENEFIT

SAFETY ON THE JOB IS A HUMAN RIGHT

MOURN FOR THE DEAD

FIGHT FOR THE LIVING