(Philadelphia)—AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler commemorated Workers Memorial Day alongside Pennsylvania union members, labor leaders and community members at PhilaPOSH’s 37th annual Workers Memorial Day breakfast on Friday.
At the event, Shuler spoke about the ongoing crisis of workplace deaths, how existing health and safety laws are failing to sufficiently protect workers, and how the Trump administration’s actions will put working people in greater danger, as detailed in the AFL-CIO’s 2025 Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect report.
Shuler’s visit dovetailed with a series of hearings the AFL-CIO has held in states across the nation over the past three weeks, where labor leaders and workers have raised the alarm about how the Trump administration’s actions threaten worker health and safety.
Full Text of President Shuler’s Remarks:
Thank you so much, Nicole [Fuller, PhilaPOSH executive director], for that introduction and all you and PhilaPOSH do to fight for the safety of every worker.
Thank you to our incredible AFL-CIO state and local leadership: Angela Ferritto, Pennsylvania State [Labor] Federation president, Daniel Bauder, president of our Philadelphia Council [AFL-CIO], and your teams.
Every year, this is one of the most difficult days we have as a labor movement. But in my eyes, it’s also one of the most important.
One of the first phrases I learned in this movement is one that I think we’re all familiar with, out of the IWW: An injury to one is an injury to all.
That is never more clear than it is on Workers Memorial Day. To every family who has lost a loved one, the 15 million working people of the AFL-CIO are standing with you.
Every year for 34 years now, we at the AFL-CIO have published a report called Death on the Job. Our team looks at every workplace death and injury: the trends we see and how to prevent them moving forward. I’m grateful to our team, who works so hard on this every year.
But this report should not exist. In the richest country in the history of the world…with the technology and capacity we have…there should not be a *need* to chronicle the stories of thousands of Americans—who are killed, disabled and injured in the workplace every year.
But it does exist. It exists because there are companies who put their profits above our lives. It exists because Black and Latino workers continue to be exploited in higher numbers, dying on the job at the highest rates we’ve seen in decades. It exists because in the year 2025—2025!—states are rolling back child labor laws, and migrant children especially are being put in unsafe conditions.
As you well know, it was the labor movement that created Workers Memorial Day, back in 1989. It was the labor movement that drove the creation of OSHA and MSHA—that defended the critical work these agencies do and the impact they have made on people’s lives.And I’ll tell you right now: It’s the labor movement that will keep fighting to defend our safety standards and protect working people from the attacks coming every day from this administration.
In just a few moments we’re going to read the names of those we’ve lost this year. Fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters who went to work one day and then never came home. Not to mention those who came home, but were never the same.The way we honor them is by telling their stories, and holding companies and lawmakers accountable. Fighting for better enforcement and resourcing key agencies so they have more inspectors and capacity, and can actually do their job to protect us.
Does it make sense to anyone in this room to gut NIOSH—the agency that makes sure our firefighters, health care workers and mine workers have the equipment they need to stay safe? Or pause a rule that was protecting our workers from silica dust—so that this disease doesn’t cruelly and slowly take away their ability to breathe?
Does it make sense to anyone that our private sector workers here in Pennsylvania have more safety protections than our public sector workers? That if you’re a firefighter, a police officer, or a transit worker, you have less safety requirements than a construction worker?
We have two paths ahead of us right now. We can let this administration gut our safety protections, take away our voice on the job, give these companies even more power to cut corners. If that happens, there is one thing I promise you: This Death on the Job report will be even longer next year. Or we can stand together, in this moment. We can channel this anger, frustration and pain into action and real change.
We can continue to organize the way Pennsylvania workers have all over this state, at [the University of] Penn[sylvania] and Whole Foods, and the Independence Seaport Museum. So that we all have a voice on the job.
We can use our unions and collective bargaining to keep workers safe. We can fight for stronger deterrents, more resources to reach vulnerable workers, laws that aren’t written by corporate America, but are written by and for workers. We can agree, no matter our politics, no one should leave for work in the morning, afraid they might not come home that night.
We owe it to those we’ve lost and their loved ones. And we owe it to the next generation to make sure they have a safe and secure future. Thank you.
Contact: Prerna Jagadeesh, 202-637-5018