A day to remember the dead ends with an urgent message: Fight for the living

Monday’s remembrance ceremony for those whose jobs killed them during the past year was brief and focused. The reading of names, a Workers Memorial Day tradition, took 7 minutes and 15 seconds. It’s chilling to think it may take longer next year.

What do we expect to happen with drastic cuts to agencies tasked with making certain that people in this country can work to support themselves and their families and not get killed in the process? It’s a safe bet we’ll experience more workplace injuries, disease and death. The list for Workers Memorial Day 2026 will be longer. We’ll have to squeeze more of those small crosses onto the lawn.

Pittsburgh’s event, held this year at the United Steelworkers Plaza Downtown, is usually beyond politics. Now everything is political. All those talking points that Fox News hosts yammered about for years are becoming reality. The Trump administration is waging war on worker safety. Consider the bloodletting at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Let’s focus on just one: NIOSH, where more than 800 workers are getting the ax. That’s two-thirds of the agency’s workforce. This at an agency with a long list of accomplishments and a budget of $363 million, tiny by Washington, D.C., standards. GOP leaders have decided that money could be better used for other things. Like paying for President Donald Trump’s golf outings, which Democratic lawmakers say cost $30 million in just the first three months of Trump 2.0.

“Today we face an evil like we have never seen,” roared Darrin Kelly, president of the Allegheny/Fayette Central Labor Council. Departments such as NIOSH, OSHA and the rest “are being completely destroyed,” he said. “Labs doing critical research for our mine workers, respiratory protection for our steelworkers and our trades, the cancer protection of our first responders — all are being eliminated without one second of regret. As a matter of fact, it’s being cheered in some circles.”

Each day, an average of 350 workers die from hazards on the job. Another 6,000 are injured. The 32 names read aloud at the plaza represented those from the region as well as USW members. 

And what are we supposed to do about this? Mourn and move on? David McCall, USW international president, urged the crowd to “remain vigilant against the notion that worker endangerment is simply a cost to doing business. And we must always protect the right of workers to unite and bargain for their own safety in the form of union.”

Kelly added this: “We cannot stand here today together without recognizing our fallen and to be absolutely furious of what is happening. By not speaking out, we dishonor them. The timeless saying of ‘Mourn the dead and fight for the living’ has taken on a new meaning.”