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>>Louis Beatty…Jesse Garcia….Phyllis Merril…Lionel Hardy
They’re among the hundreds of names that fill the Department of Labor & Industries’
Worker Memorial Book. It grows every year as pages are added
with the names of people who die from work-related injuries and illness.
Worker Memorial Day happens every April.
It’s a time to remember those who died, and renew the commitment to making workplaces safer and saving lives.
84 workers are being honored this year.
>>Phillip Cruz Jr. Phillip Cruz Jr. was a Journeyman Carpenter.
His family and friends called him “Tac”.
>>He took after me in a sense…he loved seeing something built.
He was working at a Bellevue construction
site when he fell from above into a water filled ditch and drowned. The Cruz family
came from California to the ceremony to honor Tac and give a message about worker safety.
>>Usually people go around trying to do safety after the fact instead of before. Those people
should be taught. They should have somebody designated as a safety person to go around
and check these things at least once a day. Make sure hand rails are up, make sure the
floor openings are covered, make sure the carpenters are tied off when they’re working
high with a safety harness. >>Tac was one of 15 workers who died from
falls in Washington in 2015. Many more were injured. Labor & Industries Director Joel
Sacks says we can and must prevent these tragic workplace deaths.
>>What we know is those places where people don’t get hurt are those places where they
say safety is job one and they mean it. If that means go slow, you go slow. If that means
you talk about near misses, you talk about near misses. But you always ask yourself,
what can go wrong and how are we going to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Washington is one of the safest states in the country for workers, but still far too
many die on the job every year. >> These are people, who when you think about
it, do leave a legacy that I hope at times will help you find peace. That their legacy
was one of always helping people. >>As the ceremony ended, friends and family
rang the Worker Memorial bell outside of L&I as a tribute to their loved ones.
Ernie Eichhorn Junior’s family was among them. Ernie was a landscape designer who died
at work in a car crash. One of the leading causes of death on the job.
>>I feel just a moment of distraction, and at 60 miles an hour, it only takes a second,
and his mistake was a fatality.
Sons and daughters, mothers and fathers…84 workers who are truly missed.