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Vol. 72/No. 24      June 16, 2008

 
No construction worker has to die!
(editorial)
 
We devote this week’s editorial space to the following statement released June 3 by Martín Koppel, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Congress in the 15th District in New York.

The May 30 crane collapse in Manhattan, which killed two construction workers and seriously injured one, was not an “accident” and it was not unavoidable, as bosses everywhere are claiming. Mayor Michael Bloomberg shamelessly asserted, “Construction is a dangerous business and you will always have fatalities. We have no reason to believe there was anything we could do to prevent this.” That is a lie.

Just three days later, yet another building worker died in Brooklyn after falling four stories from a scaffold. That makes 17 fatalities at New York construction sites so far this year—and nearly 100 since 2005. Nationwide, some 1,200 construction workers are killed on the job every year.

These workers are being killed by the employers’ profit drive. Construction bosses are pushing to maximize their cut of the booming New York building market. They press workers to labor faster and under more dangerous conditions. Profit, not the safety of working people or the general public, comes first for the capitalist class, its government, and its twin political parties.

When such disasters make the news, Democratic and Republican politicians squawk about the need for more regulations and government inspections. Once in a while a boss is fined, a work site is temporarily shut down, or safety officials are shuffled to make it look like the authorities are taking action. But the government safety agencies are subservient to the bosses’ interests. The paltry fines that employers pay are simply part of their overhead expenses.

The Socialist Workers Party candidates say: No construction worker has to die! Work can be done safely. The only way is through workers organizing into unions, and using union power to enforce safety. That includes refusing to work if conditions endanger lives and health.

An example for all workers was set June 2 by union construction workers in Las Vegas, who walked off the job and shut down MGM Mirage’s City Center and another multibillion-dollar project. They acted in face of murderous speedup that has led to 11 workers being killed at Las Vegas construction sites in the last year and a half.

Bosses try to intimidate undocumented immigrants into accepting dangerous conditions and low wages. Organizing immigrants into unions and fighting for the legalization of all foreign-born will help strengthen the entire labor movement.

Life-and-death questions such as job safety must be taken into the political arena. Working people need to break with the Democrats and Republicans, who from city hall to Washington represent the wealthy ruling class. We need a labor party, based on a fighting union movement, that will mobilize working people to take on the employer class and defend the interests of the majority.

We can also learn from the example of fellow working people in Cuba who, by replacing capitalist rule with a workers and farmers government, have been able to enforce their control over job safety to an unparalleled degree.
 
 
Related articles:
Las Vegas construction workers strike for safety
New York crane collapse kills two more workers
Parents protest poor construction of schools after deadly China quake
11th coal miner killed on job  
 
 
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