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.