ASSE's President, Memorial Founder Testifying Tomorrow
Tomorrow is this year's Workers Memorial Day, a day for mourning people who have died on the job and remembering the family members they have left behind. A hearing beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern time before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety is titled "Introducing Meaningful Incentives for Safe Workplaces and Meaningful Roles for Victims and Their Families" and has a list of four witnesses who will testify about the pain and cost of occupational fatalities and discuss how to reduce the death toll.
Scheduled witnesses are Celeste Monforton, Ph.D., MPH, frequent blogger for The Pump Handle, lecturer and researcher for the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at George Washington University's School of Public Health and Health Services; Jim Frederick, United Steelworkers' assistant director for safety and health; Tammy Miser, founder of United Support Memorial for Workplace Fatalities, a Lexington, Ky. nonprofit with a mission of memorializing people who died on the job and aiding their families; and Warren Brown, president of the American Society of Safety Engineers.
The subcommittee's chair is Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Miser founded USMWF.org Inc. in 2004, soon after her brother Shawn Boone died in an Oct. 29, 2003, explosion at the Hayes Lemmerz auto parts plant in Huntington, Ind. The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board determined on Oct. 5, 2005, that the explosion resulted from ignition of powdered aluminum in a dust collection system.
The AFL-CIO offers many Workers Memorial Day resources online, including posters and reports about on-the-job deaths. The federation says the first observance was in 1989, and the date was selected because it is the anniversary of OSHA's founding and the date of a similar observance in Canada. Labor unions worldwide observe the day.