Oldcastle Precast – Loveland Plant Holds Safety Stand-Down to Coincide with Workers Memorial Day

On May 5, 2016, the newly acquired Oldcastle Precast – Loveland, Colo. plant observed  National Workers Memorial Day by participating in a Safety Stand-Down, emphasizing, that in 2015, 4,234 workers, 13 every day, died in the course of employment in the United States. 

 As the entire facility paused, the Safety Stand-Down event commenced. Thirteen randomly selected, Loveland employees moved forward, one at a time, and stood before the group. A visually, sobering reminder to the entire facility, that 13 workers died each day in 2015 and did not go home to their families.

Chris Schneider Regional General Manager, for the Colorado region, asked employees to raise their hands if they have been affected by a friend or acquaintance that was killed on the job, and roughly, half of the facility raised their hands.

Employee’s shared their personal stories of how those fatalities affected them.

 The Loveland employees were moved by the Stand-Down ceremony. Remembering workers who have died on the job and honoring them heighten their awareness of how important worker safety is.

Concluding the event, all employees gathered around the newly branded facility entrance sign, for a group photograph.

Workers' Memorial Day is a day to honor those workers who have died on the job, to acknowledge the grievous suffering experienced by families and communities, and to recommit ourselves to the fight for safe and healthful workplaces for all workers.

History of Workers’ Memorial Day

During the 1950’s an organization was established that stood to unite the Labor Unions in a single unified goal. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) was established in 1955, comprised of union organizations from many different nations. There were two organizations, the AFL and the CIO that came together to create this organization with the purpose of representing workers all over the world in creating a safe workplace.

 In April of 1970, Workers’ Memorial Day was established to bring awareness to the hundreds of thousands of people all over the world who had died just trying to get through another workday. This holiday was established in the same year that the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) came into effect in the United States, an event that helped to both standardize safety protocols and create an organization that would visit sites to enforce them. It didn’t take long before this same practice was picked up and implemented in multiple industrialized countries all over the world.