If you asked most Americans, they wouldn’t be too familiar with Workers’ Memorial Day. It doesn’t get the headlines that other earmarked days on the calendar do. It’s because it’s not something CEO’s like to talk about.

We’ve lost two BMWED brothers to Covid-19. Others have gotten sick. As the months go on, and the virus lingers, the risk will hang in the air with it. Railroading is dangerous, even during better times. Add a pandemic to the equation and it becomes clear who does the real work in this country.

Companies can sing our praises, purchase commercials on television, cut their salaries while hanging on to their stock options, place sweet-sounding memes on their Facebook pages. But the fact is, there are some people who hang their neck on the line, and they are the ones Americans depend on to put equipment in the hospital, food on the table, and pick-up the garbage every week. And they are underpaid and undervalued. 

Employers are still hell-bent on skirting safety regulations, denying hazard pay, eliminating paid sick leave, diluting health insurance. They cut corners everywhere they can, and they have a government and a judicial system in place that makes it far too easy.
We hear that “essential workers are heroes” but we see working people treated as sacrificial pawns. Strategies to change that imbalance are quickly dismissed as “pie in the sky” by those who are eating every crumb of it. If anything good comes of the pandemic, maybe it will be an honest assessment of this strained economic system. We can hope.

“Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living,” was the famous mantra of the prominent Union organizer Mother Jones. Our Brotherhood will miss the two Brothers we have lost this month, and we continue to mourn all those who lost their lives in the line of duty. Then, we will unite, all of us, together, to win the fight and secure a future for the living.