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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (April 18, 2014)
Inside Workers Memorial Day Edition See Pages 8 & 9 Volume 115 Number 8 April 18, 2014 Portland Unions to remember fallen workers Ceremonies in Portland and Salem on Monday, April 28, Workers Memorial Day, will honor those who died on the job in Oregon in 2013 Thirty-nine workers died in job-related accidents in Oregon in 2013. Construction saw the largest concentration of deaths in Ore- gon, with seven workers killed in that industry. To honor all of them, the Oregon AFL-CIO, Northwest Oregon Labor Council, and the Oregon State and Columbia Pacific Build- ing and Construction Trades councils will hold memorial services on Monday, April 28 — Workers Memorial Day. The services are part of the national AFL-CIO’s Workers Memorial Day, which rec- ognizes the thousands of U.S. workers who die each year and the more than 1 million who are injured or sickened at work. The first memorial service in Oregon will take place at 10 a.m. at the construction site of the Lloyd Center Commons apartment complex at 330 Multnomah Street (adjacent to the Oregon Conven- tion Center). It is sponsored by all four labor organizations. (Read more about the ceremony and Lloyd Center Commons on Page 5.) The Oregon AFL-CIO will hold an observance at 12:30 p.m. in Salem at the Fallen Workers Memorial outside the Labor and In- dustries Building, 350 Winter St. NE, on the Capitol Mall. The service will feature the reading of the names of the Oregon workers who died on the job in 2013, along with the names of Oregonians killed in military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. (A list appears on Page 8 of this issue.) That evening, at 7 p.m., the Northwest Ore- gon Labor Council will hold a memorial serv- ice at its monthly delegates meeting. The serv- ice will include comments by Michael Wood, administrator of the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OR- OSHA). The meeting is held at the IBEW Lo- cal 48 Hall, 15937 NE Airport Way, Portland. OR-FACE Program tracks and investigates work-related deaths Since 2003, the Oregon Occupational Fatality Assessment and Control Evalua- tion (OR-FACE) Program has tracked over 600 work-related fatalities in Oregon that are caused by a traumatic injury. The pro- gram is a project of the Center for Re- search on Occupational and Environmental Toxicology at Oregon Health & Science University. Each year, OR-FACE issues a report of its findings. The most recent report avail- able is for 2011, in which Oregon recorded 59 workplace deaths. The total number of fatalities rose compared to the previous year. The number represents a rate of 3.3 fatalities per 100,000 employed workers in the civilian workforce in the state. The na- tional rate was 3.5 fatalities per 100,000. Transportation was the most common event and occupation for workplace fatali- ties in Oregon. Logging and forestry was the most fatal industry in 2011, with 10 deaths. Farming and ranching occupations had the second highest occupational death rate. And though women make up just over half of the Oregon population, OR-FACE found they are under-represented in recorded occupational fatalities. Women have historically made up 7.21 percent of work-related deaths on average. However, 2011 was the highest percentage of female fatalities to date. That year, five of the 59 recorded deaths (9 percent) were women. These deaths resulted from violence, falls, and a motor vehicle incident. Hispanic worker deaths fell from 16 percent in 2010 (the highest recorded) to 10 percent in 2011. The percent of death among Hispanic workers were lower than that of the Hispanic population in Oregon (12.2 percent). Of the six Hispanic worker deaths, four were the result of contact with an object or equipment. These fatalities are now published as in- teractive maps on OR-FACE’s website. Go to www.ohsu.edu/xd/research/centers-in- stitutes/croet/outreach/or-face/ to see more. (Editor’s Note: OR-FACE has statis- tics on job-related fatalities by county, by month, by day of the week, and by time of day. See Page 11.) Worker Fatal Fatalities in Oregon by Occupation and Event, 2011 Source: “Occupational Fatalities in Oregon Annual Report, 2011.” Oregon Occupational Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (OR-FACE) Program.
