It was too nice a day for such a somber occasion.
The skies were sunny, there was a slight breeze, and the mercury reached into the low 80s. But the congregation that gathered at St. Camillus Church in Silver Spring, Maryland was there to mourn the dead at the parish’s fifth annual Workers Memorial Day Mass on April 23.
Franciscan Father Brian Jordan, who had been pastor of St. Camillus when the Masses began in 2022, celebrated the Mass. He came in from New York City, where he was reassigned by his order in 2024. Father Jordan had ministered at Ground Zero in New York following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Winding around the edge of the sanctuary of St. Camillus Church were 20 black-draped chairs, each one holding a hard hat and a rose. Father Jordan noted that at the previous year’s Mass, there were 40 such chairs – twice as many as April 23.
But 19 deaths of workers this past year in Washington, Maryland and Virginia are still too many, he said in his homily. “I wish we had no chairs,” he declared.
The 20th chair, he added, was to honor victims of workplace violence.
“Fifteen of the 19 we honor here today were Hispanic,” Father Jorden said. “They wanted nothing more than to get up, go to their job and come home to their loved ones.” Except that on one of those days, they never made it home.
The toll, according to Father Jordan, was grim. Five fell to their deaths. Six died in accidents with heavy equipment. Three were crushed to death. One died in an explosion. Four were electrocuted, two on the same day – at the same job site.
The fatalities show how important it is in the United States to have “the right of association, the right to organize,” Father Jordan said, noting that nearly all of such deaths involve non-union workers. Unions provide training in workplace safety and advocate for safe working conditions for their workers.
The Mass focuses on the construction trade unions in the Washington area. Four unions sent sizable delegations including the International Brotherhood of Electricals Workers Local 26, Pipefitters Local 602, Plumbers and Gasfitters Local 5, and District 51 of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.
After Communion, Austin Keyser, an IBEW international vice president, spoke about the dangers on the job. One of the men – all were men – being honored at the Mass was Amanuel Mehari of IBEW Local 26.
The IBEW “was not founded on the dignity of work, but the indignity of death,” Keyser said, noting that at the time of its founding, “one of every two men died on the job.”
After the Mass, Herbert Zaldivar, a business agent with the Painters Union, recalled when he was working as a painter and someone had thrown a metal blade that he stepped on, breaking his big toe. Another time, after becoming a business agent, he was visiting a job site that had both union and nonunion workers. On the nonunion side, he was standing and minding his own business when a thrown blade whizzed past him. “I could have lost an eye. I could have lost my face,” he said.
Two Steamfitters members, neither of whom wanted to be named, told of hazards they encounter on the job. “Stored energy of any kind is dangerous,” cautioned one. The other catalogued the different kinds of accidents that could befall a worker, among them a trench collapse, then abruptly stopped. “I don’t like to think about it,” he said.
Mark Smith, a third-year IBEW journeyman, said lifting heavy objects and drilling can pose dangers at work but the dust produced from drilling is “one of those long-term killers,” since dust can get in one’s lungs. and stay there.
“We were trained right. Use a mask – the right kind,” Smith said. “Use a vacuum on the drill. I always do.”
He added, “I’m 50. I’m not 20. I want to live to be able to pick up my grandkids.” Unfortunately, Smith said, mask wearing is one of the rare safety measures not enforced at the job site.
“In 2024, 5,070 workers were killed on the job, or one every 104 minutes,” said a report by the National Council on Occupational Safety and Health issued earlier in April; 2024 is the last year with complete federal figures. “Behind each of these deaths is a preventable failure of companies to protect workers and of systems to hold them accountable.”
International Workers Memorial Day is observed worldwide April 28, including with a 5:30 p.m. Mass that day at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington.
