As normal public events for 28 April won’t be possible because of measures to contain coronavirus/Covid-19, the UK’s national Hazards Campaign has published its own 10-point plan for mostly virtual action. The national campaign says marking International Workers’ Memorial Day has never been more important.
“Some workplace events may still go ahead but we are taking #iwmd20 online, developing a social media campaign that we want everyone to join in,” The campaign says. “This will keep the day and its perennial aims on the public and political agenda with the slogan to ‘Remember the Dead and Fight for the Living’.
This year’s international theme has been changed by the global union confederation ITUC to ‘Stop the pandemic at work’.” The campaign’s 10-point plan includes displaying a series of print-off-or-order posters and other graphics in your window, posting selfies with the hashtag #iwmd20 and telling the campaign what you are doing and where.
The Hazards Campaign poster message is: “Whether the threat at work is another new virus, dangerous substances or heartbreaking demands, your life should not be on the line. Unions can make it better.” Tag lines for the union-led event, which has become the world’s biggest health and safety campaign day, include ‘Unions – Fighting for your life’.
The campaign is also supporting the ITUC’s call for people to light a candle (safely) in their window on the evening of 28 April.
Hazards Campaign 28 April call to action. Campaign materials can be downloaded for free, printed off, used online and in social media campaigns, as can a series of Hazards Campaign display boards.
TUC 28 April 2020 news and resources webpage.
Global action and resources: ITUC/Hazards 28 April website.
When the “Late Tommy Hart” co-ordinator of the then Birmingham Hazards Centre reported to a “Hazards Steering Group Meeting” about “Worker Memorial Day in USA and Canada he suggested that we in the UK who were organising the “European Work Hazards Conference “in Sheffield That we should put it to them that if we in Europe adopted the 28th April as Workers Memorial Day it could become “International Workers ‘ Memorial Day. We did and it now is adopted all over the world. Now we face Covid-19 and front line workers in our National Health Service” are dying or becoming ill for lack of “Personal Protective Equipment” and this is the same for all front line workers around the world, those who keep their communities in touch during “lock down “
NEVER WAS THERE A BETTER NEED FOR
“28th April”
“INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ MEMORIAL DAY,”