Brothers and Sisters,

This Monday, April 28, on Workers Memorial Day, we honor the workers who were killed on the job. 

April 28 marks the 55th anniversary of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, granting what unions had fought for decades to ensure: The right to a safe workplace. 

Yet now, more than half a century later, far too many workers are still dying on the job, with many of those deaths attributable to corporate greed and inadequate federal oversight. 

In California alone in 2023, there were 439 workplace fatalities, according to “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect,” a report by the AFL-CIO.

That includes 49 deaths from contact with objects or equipment, 79 deaths from falls, 95 deaths from assaults or violent acts, 106 deaths from exposure to harmful substances or environments and 108 deaths from transportation incidents. 

But these aren’t just statistics, not just numbers. These are people.  

People like 53-year-old Dean Anthony Melavic, who fell 80 feet down a silo at a sugar plant in Tracy. 

People like 22-year-old Jose Samuel Velasquez Cordova, who was fatally injured by a tractor at a strawberry farm in Santa Maria. 

People whose deaths could have been prevented. Whose deaths SHOULD HAVE been prevented. 

And that’s just in 2023. 

An analysis of headlines from the last year, 2024, shows that workers continue to needlessly die on the job, with farm and construction workers in particular peril.

Yet, in Washington, D.C., the Trump administration is more interested in slashing protections for workers rather than strengthening them. President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk have gutted the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the only worker safety and health research agency. 

They have made it abundantly clear that labor’s job is not finished. We must continue to fight, in both Sacramento and in D.C., to ensure that our workers have the strongest possible protections and to prevent, or roll back, any regulatory cuts that could endanger them. 

This Monday, to quote Mary “Mother” Jones, let us pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.

In Solidarity, 

Lorena Gonzalez