Workers Memorial Day

Today is Workers Memorial Day

One fatality or injury at work is one too many and that’s why we stand strong as part of the campaign for better and stronger legislation to protect the lives of workers across the country, says GMB Scotland.

GMB Scotland members today attended International Workers’ Memorial Day (IWMD) events across the country, in remembrance of people killed or injured at work.

As trade unionists the world over ‘remember the dead – fight for the living’, GMB Scotland’s Glasgow Branch 29 has been building IWMD awareness through the art of the Branch’s Shop Stewart, Frank McNab.

Frank has lent his original painting of the Soviet test pilot, aerospace engineer and cosmonaut Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov, who died on the Soyuz 1 mission in April 1967 when his capsule failed and crashed on re-entry, to this year’s IWMD poster.

Describing the inspiration for his painting, Frank said: “It depicts Komarov standing in a Glasgow tenement stairwell, contemplating the flight of an early mayfly that has flown through the window’s small opening and into the vast, dark space of the stairwell.

“I thought the courage and contribution of Komarov to the benefit of humanity would serve as intense and touching symbol for workers in Scotland or anywhere in the world to focus on Workers’ Memorial Day.”

Vladimir Komarov was the first human to die on a space mission in 1967. He knew the Soyuz 1 capsule was faulty (over 200 faults had been identified). “If I don’t make this flight, they’ll send the backup pilot instead,” Komarov is reported as saying: the backup pilot was was Yuri Gagarin. Vladimir Komarov refused to do that to his friend. “That’s Yuri,” he said, “and he’ll die instead of me. We’ve got to take care of him.”

In 2014-5 142 workers died at work in the UK.

GMB Scotland Secretary Gary Smith said: “We are proud and privileged that we can utilise Frank’s talents to build activism and awareness among our members on workers memorial day.

“It is unacceptable that every year in Scotland there are scores of workers who go out to earn a living but don’t come home to their loved ones or return injured, either temporarily or permanently, and often because of negligence on the part of their employer.

“One fatality or injury at work is one too many and that’s why GMB Scotland stands strong as part of the campaign for better and stronger legislation to protect the lives of workers across the country.”

Sadly it’s been announced that one worker died and another was injured while working on the new Forth crossing earlier today.