Workers Memorial Day April 28 White Oak Park

The Bloomington & Normal Trades & Labor Assembly (AFL-CIO) will mark Workers’ Memorial Day with a commemorative service at 6 a.m. on Monday, April 28, at White Oak Park, 1514 Cottage Avenue in Bloomington.  

Workers’ Memorial Day is an annual commemoration the AFL-CIO has held since 1989 to remember workers who lost their lives in on-the-job accidents or died from chronic occupational exposure.  The AFL-CIO estimates, from most recent 2021 federal statistics, that 5,190 workers died on the job and approximately 120,000 died from occupational exposure.

During the brief ceremony that morning Rev. Mollie Ward will deliver an invocation; the names of over 400 McLean County workers who have died locally in on-the-job accidents since 1856 will be read and remembered.

On April 28, 1971, the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) took effect.  The nation’s national labor federation, the AFL-CIO, said this year, “Together on this Workers Memorial Day, we fight for our lives and confront attacks on safety and health agencies that keep our workplaces safe—and we demand action for independent oversight. We hold employers accountable to keep workers safe. We demand more—not fewer—government resources to do this. We demand dignity at work.”