Unite members are being urged to get involved with this year’s International Workers Memorial Day (IWMD), with plans well underway for country wide commemoration events to “remember the dead and fight for the living” later this month.
The annual event is held around the world every year on April 28 as workers gather to reflect on fellow workers lost or injured while just doing their jobs.
This year Unite members are organising memorials around the country, and joining in many others and the union has produced lots of resources and guides to help branches get involved.
For 2025 the International TUC theme is “Occupational health and safety: A fundamental right at work” including an explicit additional focus on the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digitisation on occupational health and safety.
Events will be happening across the country. In London construction workers will gather at the Building Workers memorial at Tower Hill, in Somerset workers from Hinkley Point C will mark the day at a memorial in Bridgwaters’ Blake Gardens and in Glasgow workers will gather at the memorial in the People’s Palace.
The central Birmingham event will highlight the safety-critical factor behind Unite’s local bins dispute, and remember David Carpenter, a binman for Coventry City Council, who died after being crushed in a bin lorry in 2023.
There are also events at the Unite Memorial in Liverpool, Lincoln Square in Manchester and many many more.
Global partners that Unite works with also have themes for the day of remembrance, for example BWI will highlight its “Too Hot to Work” campaign around the dangers of heat stress, as well as launching its “Stop Deadly Dust” campaign.
