Memorial service April 26 in Portland

The Sept. 11 tragedies at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, will be represented at a station during a Workers Memorial Day service Friday, April 26, at Hughes Memorial United Methodist Church, 111, NE Failing, Portland.

The national AFL-CIO has declared April 28 as Workers Memorial Day to remember those who have suffered and died on the job and to renew the fight for safe workplaces.

The Portland service, sponsored by the Northwest Oregon Labor Council, starts at 11:30 a.m. and will end by 1 p.m.

Clergy of several faiths will read remembrances at one of seven stations representing various crafts. The names of workers' killed on the job last year in Oregon will be read as a bell tolls in remembrance. (For a list of names, including union members killed Sept. 11, see pages 8-9.)

The Portland Police Bureau's Color Guard will participate and General Strike will perform.

Workers Memorial Day proclamations issued by the governor, mayor of Portland and chair of Multnomah County will be read and Peter DeLuca, administrator of the Oregon-Occupational Safety and Health Administration, will speak.

Decades of struggle by workers and their unions have resulted in significant improvements in working conditions. But the toll of workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths remains enormous. Each year more than 60,000 workers die from job injuries and illnesses and another 6 million are injured.

The first Workers Memorial Day was observed in 1989. April 28 was chosen because it is the anniversary of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the day of a similar remembrance in Canada.

Every year, people in hundreds of communities and at worksites recognize workers who have been killed or injured on the job.

Trade unionists around the world now mark April 28 as an International Day of Mourning.

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