Chris Dodd: “Saturday, April 28, is Workers Memorial Day. Tomorrow, working men and women around the world will gather to remember…”

“Saturday, April 28, is Workers Memorial Day. Tomorrow, working men and women around the world will gather to remember their millions of brothers and sisters who have been injured or killed on the job. I join them in their grief-and in their determination to secure a safer future. Work-related accidents kill Americans with a regularity that calls us to question the very word ``accident.'' Fifteen deaths every day, and more than 11,000 injuries: They are grimly predictable and often preventable. Today is for men like Eleazar Torres-Gomez, a laundry worker who was dragged by a conveyor belt into a 300-degree industrial dryer, where he burned to death. Sadness at his death is matched by an equal anger- especially when we learn that, in the two years preceding it, his employer was cited more than 170 times for unsafe, illegal working conditions. We remember Eleazar today. Today is for the 12 miners killed last year in Sago, West Virginia, when an explosion trapped them underground for two days. Only a few years before, the Mine Safety and Health Administration struck down 17 new safety rules for trapped miners--rules that might have saved the miners in Sago. We remember them today. Today is for the 28 union construction workers killed in Connecticut, 20 years ago this month, when the apartment towers they were building collapsed with a roar, within seconds, into ruined concrete and steel.”