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Four Die in Latest Crane Disaster |
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A 30-story mobile crane, one of the country’s largest, collapsed yesterday in Houston, killing four workers and injuring seven others, according to an AP report.
The deadly collapse is the latest in a recent series of fatal crane accidents that have claimed more than a dozen lives in New York City, Las Vegas and Miami.
Friday’s collapse took place at the LyondellBasell refinery in southeast Houston. Workers ran to a lunch tent designated as an evacuation site when a siren went off. Tragically, the falling crane landed on top of the tent, according to the AP.
For more than four years, the Bush administration has failed to implement an updated crane safety standard developed by a standards advisory committee.
A recent report by the Center for Construction Research and Training, citing government statistics, found an average of 22 contruction workers are killed each year in crane-related incidents. The report recommended stronger certification and training, inspection reporting and oversight measures to prevent crane-relate fatalities and injuries.
According to the AP report, Texas, which led the nation in crane-related deaths in 2005 and 2006, requires no state or city oversight or licensing of crane operations. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires cranes to be inspected each year but this is a “self-policing” operation for owners. Although inspection records are supposed to be kept, they do not have to be submitted to OSHA.
LyondellBasell, one of the world’s largest chemical companies, was created last year by the merger of the U.S. firm Lyondell Chemical and the Dutch company Basell.
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Mark Allen
A Song by John Warner©John Warner 1997
(Tune: Derby Ram)
play mp3 or
The roof Mark Allen fell from
Was a hangman’s trap of shame,
But from the day Mark Allen died
The Union sings his fame
Chorus
He’s every worker’s brother,
He is the Union’s son,
And in Mark Allen’s memory
We’ll fight till we have won.
He went to inspect safety,
A Union- worker’s right,
But those who had the contract
Tried to bar him from the site.
You contractors* with cheap, tin souls,
The truth you can’t deny,
It was your unsafe practices
That let Mark Allen die.
“The Union doesn’t pay your wage,
You climb back up that wall” -
So frightened young men went back up
And saw Mark Allen fall.
You bureaucrats of government
Who blame him for his death,
His blood is on your murderer’s hands,
You lie with every breath.
Mark Allen’s aching mother weeps,
Mark Allen’s father grieves,
The Union’s weeping with them,
But it’s rolling up its sleeves,
* more forceful noun may be substituted
Notes
Mark Allen was a union safety officer who died recently on a Perth buiding site. The CD ‘Union Is Strength’ issued in 1996 is dedicated to his memory and to a fund in his name.
Enquiries to Walters & Warner
PO Box 615 Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
Tel (02) 9698 2206 or (02) 9557 7556 Fax (02) 9698 2115
Email mwalters@mail.usyd.edu.au
The Search For WMD Is Not Over
A poem by David G. Hurlburt©David G. Hurlburt 2005
A poem for Workers Memorial Day April 28, 2005
Hey president bush looking for WMD
It is not in Iraq but it is plain to see
April 28 is workers memorial day,
We mourn for our dead and we say,
Honor those who have died because of their working
As we struggle each day to find the accidents lurking
Millions a year from on the job accidents and disease
And 2 million world wide is that not one of the wmd’s
“Safety first” if it is not more than a buck
Workers die and that is just plain bad luck
Osha has been gutted no money to spend
When enforcement would save money in the end
When you go looking for your WMDs
Open your eyes it is just plain to see
Just try looking in your own back yard!
The sick and dying and the permantly scared.
The pain the suffering of families the mounting dead
Death or injury on the job is the wmd’s to dread
Workers memorial day! We prayed for the dead
Now we fight for the living Mother Jones said!