Last Chance.

        International Workers Memorial Day, April 28th. has passed, but to remember and honour those who died simply by going to work to try to earn a living, the powerful exhibition to emphasise the dangers inherent in working for a living in this society, put on by the Glasgow Keelie, at Glasgow Green, on the Common Drying Green just behind what was Templeton's Carpet factory, will remain until Sunday around 4PM. It will them be removed. So you still have a chance to see this very moving and poignant display on Sunday May 2nd until 4pm. Take that chance, and perhaps be moved to remember the dead and fight like hell for the living.

 

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Blood Red Bread.

         It is such a wonderful and powerful display, so here are some more photos of the Glasgow Keelie's International Workers Memorial Day event on Glasgow Green, yesterday April 28th. 2021. The display will remain in place until Sunday, May 2nd.

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Our Daily Bread!

 

      Still more photos from the Glasgow Keelie's International Workers Memorial Day event on Glasgow Green, April 28th. 2021.

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Expensive Bread.

 

             More photos from Glasgow Keelie's International Workers Memorial Day display on Glasgow Green on April 28th. 2021.

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Price of Bread.

          April 28th. International Workers Memorial Day, was marked across the world in different ways. The Glasgow Keelie marked it a most poignant and powerful manner, taking various disasters at work places and displaying them as aprons hung on the common drying green of Glasgow Green opposite what used to be Templeton's carpet factory, site of one of the disasters. The first part of the display was made up of 29 aprons each on representing a young women killed at the Templeton' carpet factory disaster, 1889, when a wall collapsed on top of the loom shed, the ages of those killed ranged form 14 years. Each apron had the name and age of the person killed and some details of that person. The other half of the display was of aprons each representing various disasters where workers lost their lives at work, from the Auchengeich coal mine disaster to the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster. The aprons were laid out in several long lines resembling white tombstones of a national graveyard. There were other displays hung on the washing line, one giving the UN shocking statement: United Nations estimates that six thousand people are killed daily at work - three times MORE people than in WARS, drug and alcohol abuse combined. [United Nations]. An unacceptable price to pay for trying to earn your crust of bread.
        The whole display created considerable interest from those walking on the green, and shocked many of them at this relentless waste of human life for profit. The display will remain on the Green's common drying green until Sunday, so why not take a stroll in Glasgow Green and take a look at this catalogue that shows what some people have to pay in this economic system to put food on the table. 

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Bloody Coal.

           We should realise that going to work can mean death, trying to earn your crust of bread, can mean death. So many ordinary people go to work and never return home alive. Your friends, neighbours, family members, set off to earn money to pay the rent, put food on the table but never come home. In this capitalist profit oriented world, health and safety at work is considered as cost and so is pruned to suit the profit margins. United Nations estimates that six thousand people are killed daily at work - three times MORE people than in WARS, drug and alcohol abuse combined. [United Nations]
         April 28th is now marked as International Workers Memorial Day, when we should all come together and remember the real cost of this economic system that favours the few. Our lives are littered with, in most cases, avoidable disasters at work. Below is just one example of the price of earning your daily bread.

 

Blood Red Coal.
          The industrial revolution was driven by power that power in a large capacity was coal. We should always realise that coal is not black, it is red with stained blood. Coal supplied the power, blood and sweat oiled the wheels. Deaths in heavy industries during the rise of the industrial revolution and well into the modern age have been horrendous, sometimes individual deaths, sometime mass deaths and mining communities are no stranger to mass deaths.
        One such disaster of mass deaths was at a coal mine just outside Glasgow near Moodiesburn, the Auchengeich pit disaster, September 18th 1959. I’m old enough to remember that day. My father was a coal miner all his working life, the last pit he worked in was the near by and sister pit, Western Aucheneich Colliery, and he had just retired a few weeks before the disaster. The mining communities are close knit communities and my father knew all of those who perished. I can only imagine the effect those deaths had on the families, I know it shattered my father.
       One event, one day, in one community and 47 men lost their lives, the youngest 22 the oldest 62. All died of asphyxiation by poisoning from carbon monoxide, from an underground fire. 47 deaths in a small community. They say lightening never strikes twice in the same place. Auchengeich Colliery disaster 22nd. January 1931: Air Tubes Destroyed- Miners' Sacrifice to Save Their Workmates : Five miners were killed and six injured in an explosion which occurred early yesterday morning in a Lanarkshire colliery. Several men escaped injury in the explosion, but returned immediately to the danger zone in an effort to assist their comrades, and were overcome by gas fumes.
       Could the second Auchengeich Colliery disaster have been avoided? Like all activities where output and profit are the motives, safety often slips down the priority list, but it is not for me to judge in this case.
       I will however quote from the official inquiry report.
Quote from official report: 2. I find that forty-seven men on a man-riding train underground in a return airway died from asphyxia due to poisoning by carbon monoxide contained in smoke from a fire which originated in the driving belt of a booster fan farther inbye and spread to wood props and laggings used as roof supports.
Quote from part of conclusions: (9) By calculation, a balata transmission belt made of 33 ½ oz. cotton duck put on after the speed-up of the fan had an excess capacity of about 50 per cent. and the 31 oz. belt which caught fire about 25 per cent. But the first of these belts lasted less than ten weeks and the other only two days.
        (10) The belt which caught fire was not of the 33 ½ oz. weight ordered by the National Coal Board and failed to satisfy completely some of the tests prescribed by British Standard 2066.
        Live link to inquiry: http://www.scottishmining.co.uk/250.html Here you will also find a list of mining disasters in Lanarkshire from the 1800’s, and there are many.

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Memorial.

International Workers Memorial Day

       Keelie’s remembered the deaths of workers in unsafe workplaces, during the afternoon on 28th April, 2021 at the drying green on Glasgow Green. This was the site of the Templeton Mill Disaster, 1889, when high winds collapsed the building on over 140 women and children weavers. They made carpets for Titanic and Cunard ships as well as Royal weddings with Company assets of £26million in today’s money. Despite huge wealth, many of their workers died on the job in fire or crushing incidents. In 1889, the rescuers included the women themselves who organised frantic search parties for sisters, daughters and mothers. Regarded as a cover up the inquest blamed ‘confused responsibilities’ between the Architect and the Engineer. Keelies hung workers' aprons to commemorate the 29 women and girls who died at Templetons and other Clydesiders including, Stockline Plastics staff, Graftons Shopworkers, Antares Trawler folk, Asbestos, Auchengeich mine disaster, and NHS COVID 19 workers, and many, many more, plus individuals like Graham Meldrum who went to work and never came home again.
      United Nations estimates that six thousand people are killed daily at work - three times MORE people than in WARS, drug and alcohol abuse combined. [United Nations]
       Keelies say most die because their employer put profit and production ahead of safety at work. We should remember them and honour them, and take this as a reason to alter the economic system that sets these priorities. WORKERS LIVES are worth much more than an economic system of profit for the few.

 

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Manslaughter.

      Work is glorified in this capitalist system, it is spouted as giving meaning to your life, to give you dignity and to give you a decent standard of living. Of course experience tells us none of this is near the truth. Under the capitalist system, work is exploitation, maintained at the lowest wage rate the employer can get away with.There is also the fact that health and safety is seen as eating into their profits, so will be by-passed when and where possible. One thing that is never mentioned, under these conditions, work is often a killer, not just from avoidable "accidents" but also from industrial diseases. The corporate powers are without doubt, in many cases, guilty of corporate manslaughter, all in the name of profit. Under no circumstances should your occupation be a possible death sentence. However, not until all manufacturing and distribution is under the control of the those who work their, will this corporate manslaughter stop. The interests of the corporate bosses and those of the workers are diametrically opposed, the circle can't be squared. 

         IndustriALL Global Union’s Korean affiliate the KMWU believes that POSCO workplaces will only become safer when union representatives are able to participate fully in safety structures. Instead, POSCO recently dismissed three union activists for exposing union busting, and failed to reinstate them after the National Labor Relations Commission ruled that the dismissal was unfair.
       The KMWU argues that large-scale industrial disasters happen at POSCO due to management decisions to not upgrade aging facilities and equipment, to downsize subcontracted workers, and to outsource risks instead of eliminating them.
      POSCO blocks the KMWU from accessing accident sites and refuses to allow union safety experts to participate in accident investigation. The company fails to disclose the true cause of an accident after an investigation is concluded, leaving workers to face the same risks that killed their colleagues.
      South Korea has the highest occupational fatality rate among OECD countries and every year 2,400 workers die in industrial fatalities. In 2018, trade unions and civil society launched a campaign for a Corporate Manslaughter Bill after a young worker in his twenties was found dead in a power plant after the company violated standard operating procedures.
       The signatures of 100,000 citizens placed this bill before the Korean National Assembly. The intent of the bill is to impose heavy penalties on employers who cause the death of workers, and to ensure that they adopt comprehensive preventative measures.
         The KMWU believes that if the bill becomes law, POSCO CEO Jeong-Woo Choi should the first person to be held accountable.
        Accidents in November and December at POSCO’s Gwangyang steelworks in Korea resulted in the deaths of five workers. On 24 November, an explosion near a blast furnace lead to the deaths of three workers. In further incidents on 9 and 23 December, another two POSCO workers lost their lives.
      The lastest is the 18th accident in the past three years at the company’s Pohang and Gwangyang plants. POSCO workers have been killed by asphyxiation, explosions, fires, physical crush injuries, fatal falls, and overwork. The accidents have continued despite the plants being subject to an inspection conducted by the labour ministry.

       In this society we work to survive, that shouldn't mean we face death for our daily bread.work 

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Death Masks!!

      Your lords and masters are telling you to get back to work, the parasite class need you. Of course they will tell you that your boss will put in place safety measure for your protection. One of those protections may be compulsory wearing of face masks. Sounds all well and good, but under certain working conditions the wearing of face masks could be contributing to your own death. I for one, with chronic restrictive airways disease, would be reluctant to wear a face mask under certain conditions. Working conditions and the environment you work in are just as important as wearing a face mask, but face masks are cheaper.

     If the conditions you are working under are not right, face masks are a danger. Strenuous work, poor ventilation and too hot an environment make face masks a real danger. Fight for these conditions to be remedied before you return to work with your face mask.  

     The following article posted on Enough is Enough, is from Poland:

 

 

        Poland. A few days ago, in an Amazon warehouse near Poznań (Poland), one of the workers died of a heart attack during a night shift. Other employees associate this death with hypoxia and heat – the obligation to wear face masks at work.
Originally published by Indymedia NL.

      People find it harder to breathe in masks and hence – work harder. Employees wear face masks for up to 10 hours a day. They cannot take them off, because they face the consequences – says Maria Malinowska from the Employee Initiative Inicjatywa Pracownicza IP at Amazon in Sady near Poznań.
       Two years earlier, the Labor Inspectorate was to carry out research on the energy expenditure of Amazon employees near Poznań. According to trade union reports, some departments came across very large exceedances. – Despite this, Amazon has not reduced standards.
      According to Radio Poznań, one of the employees of the magazine said: “Many of us complain about hypoxia. However, we do not take off the masks, because there are threatening reprimands and sanctions. “
      Initially, Amazon, despite the virus threat, did not provide employees with masks at all. After detecting COVID-19 infection in the company’s warehouse near Łódź, carrying them during work became mandatory.

OZZ Inicjatywa Pracownicza (warning Facebook Link), May 23, 2020

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